The outside farm work has progressed wonderfully, but the indoor farm work is done in exactly the same way as it was twenty-five years ago, with the possible exception of the cream-separator. Many a farmyard, with its binders, rakes, drills, rollers, gasoline engine, fanning-mill, and steam-plow looks as if someone had been giving a machinery shower; but in the kitchen you will find the old washboard and dasher churn, which belonged to the same era as the reaping hook and tallow candle. The women still carry the water in a pail from a pump outside, wash the dishes on the kitchen table, and carry the water out again in a pail; although out in the barn the water is pumped by a windmill, or a gasoline engine. The outside work on the farm is done by horse, steam, or gasoline, but the indoor work is all done by woman-power. And then, when the woman-power gives out, as it does many times, under the strain of hard work and childbearing, the whole neighborhood mourns and says: "God's ways are past finding out." I remember once attending the funeral of a woman who had been doing the work for a family of six children and three hired men, and she had not even a baby carriage to make her work lighter. When the last baby was three days old, just in threshing time, she died. Suddenly, and without warning, the power went off, and she quit without notice. The bereaved husband was the most astonished man in the world. He had never known Jane to do a thing like that before, and he could not get over it. In threshing time, too! "I don't know what could have happened to Jane--a strong young woman like her," he said over and over again. We all gathered at the house that afternoon and paid our respects to the deceased sister, and we were all very sorry for poor Ed. We said it was a terrible way for a poor man to be left. The chickens came close to the dining-room door, and looked in, inquisitively. They could not understand why she did not come out and feed them, and when they were driven away they retreated in evident bad humor, gossiping openly of the shiftless, lazy ways of folks they could mention, if they wished to name names. The six little children, whom the neighbor women had dressed in their best clothes, sat dazed and silent, fascinated by the draped black coffin; but the baby, the tiny one who had just entered the race, gathered up the feeling of the meeting, and cried incessantly in a room upstairs. It was a hard rebellious cry, too, as if the little one realized that an injustice had been done.