Page:About people (IA aboutpeople00well).pdf/227

needle-and-thread mother. Almost all have some interest outside their homes. Once only Quaker women spoke in church. Now all churches recognize that the power of deposing a man from the pulpit, or of elevation to it, rests with the women; they really rule the church. "Women have no business outside of their homes," said a countryman. But his wife went to a prayer-meeting, and a neighbor reported that "she had made a feeling, eloquent prayer." The husband slightly winced. She went to a temperance gathering, and spoke fervently and piously, and the men talked of Farmer B.'s wife; and Farmer B. "smartened up," got his wife a hired girl, and declared that "his wife wan't one of the show-off kind, but that she begun low down in a prayer-meeting and worked her way up."

As this ability to manage outside affairs increases, women will have too little time to be patient with the limitations of caste, for