seashore or mountain, she was striving feebly to push away the tons of
splendid responsibility from her brain.

One day she gave over the futile attempt. Something crashed down upon
and all around her, and everything except inconceivable misery of soul
was a blank.

Expensive doctors diagnosed her case as nervous prostration. When she
vanished from the eyes of her public, and a high-salaried housekeeper,
a butler, a nursery governess and an extra Abigail took her place and
did half her work in the satin-lined shell out of which she had crept,
maimed and well-nigh murdered, it was announced that she was "under
the care of a specialist at a retreat."

A retreat! Heaven save and pardon us for making such homes part and
parcel and a necessity of our century and our land!

Our Rich Man's Wife never left it until she was borne forth into the
securer refuge of the narrow house that needed none of her
care-taking. Upon the low green thatch lies heavily the shadow of a
mighty monument that, to the satirist's eye, has a family likeness to
the stone pile which killed her.

The Farmer's Wife was born and bred among the prairies, out of sight
of which she had traveled but once, and that on her wedding journey.
She came back from the brief outing to take possession of "her own
house"--prideful phrase to every young matron.

It was an eight-roomed farmstead, with no modern conveniences. That
meant, that all the water used in the kitchen and dwelling had to be