Just above the coffin hung an enlarged picture of "Jane" in her wedding dress, and it was a bright face that looked out at the world from the heavy gold frame, a sweet girlish face, which seemed to ask a question with its eager eyes. And there below, in the black draped coffin, was the answer--the same face, only a few years older, but tired, so inexpressibly tired, cold and silent; its light gone out--the power gone off. Jane had been given her answer. And upstairs Jane's baby cried its bitter, insistent cry. Just then the minister began to read the words of the funeral service: "Inasmuch as it hath _pleased_ the Lord...." This happened in the fall of the year, and the next spring, just before the busy time came on, the bereaved husband dried his eyes, painted his buggy, and went out and married one of the neighbor's daughters, a good strong one--and so his house is still running on woman-power. If men had to bear the pain and weariness of child-bearing, in addition to the unending labors of housework and caring for children, for one year, at the end of that time there would be a perfect system of cooperation and labor-saving devices in operation, for men have not the genius for martyrdom that women have; and they know the value of cooperative labor. No man tries to do everything the way women do. No man aspires to making his own clothes, cleaning his own office, pressing his own suits, or even cleaning his own shoes. All these things he is quite willing to let people do for him, while he goes ahead and does his own work. Man's work is systematized well and leaves a man free to work in his own way. His days are not broken up by details. On the other hand the home is the most haphazard institution we have. Everything is done there. (I am speaking now of the homes in the country.) In each of the homes there is a little bit of washing done, a little dressmaking, a little butter-making, a little baking, a little ironing going on, and it is all by hand-power, which is the most expensive power known. It is also being done largely by amateurs, and that adds to the amount of labor expended. Women have worked away at these endless tasks for generations, lovingly, unselfishly, doing their level best to do everything, with no thought of themselves at all. When things get too many for them, and the burdens overpower them, they die quietly, and some other woman, young, strong and fresh, takes their place, and the modest white slab in the graveyard says, "Thy will be done," and everybody is apparently satisfied. The Lord is blamed for the whole thing.