[11] Copyright, 1915, _The Woman's Home Companion_.
"FOLKS"[12]
I dunno whether you like to go to a big meeting or not? Some folks seem
to dread them. Well, I love them. Folks never seem to be so much folks
as when I'm with them, thousands at a time.
Well, once annually I go to what's a big meeting for us, on the occasion
of the Friendship Village Married Ladies' Cemetery Improvement
Sodality's yearly meeting.... I always hope folks won't let that name of
us bother them. We don't confine our attention to Cemetery any more. But
that's been the name of us for twenty-four years, and we got started
calling it that and we can't bear to stop. You know how it is--be it
institutions or constitutions or ideas or a way to mix the bread, one of
our deformities is that we hate to change.
"Seems to me," says Mis' Postmaster Sykes once, "if we should give up
that name, we shouldn't be loyal nor decent nor loving to the dead."
"Shucks," says I, "how about being loyal and decent and loving to the
living?"
"Your mind works so queer sometimes, Calliope," says Mis' Sykes,
patient.
"Yes--well," I says, "mebbe. But anyhow, it works. It don't just set
and set and set, and never hatch nothing."
So we continued to take down bill-boards and put in shrubbery and chase
flies and dream beautiful, far-off dreams of sometime getting in
sewerage, all under the same undying name.
Well, at our annual meeting that night, we were discussing what should
be our work the next year. And suggestions came in real sluggish, being
the thermometer had been trying all day to climb over the top of its
hook.
Suggestions run about like this:
_1. See about having seats put in the County House Yard._
_2. See about getting the blankets in the Calaboose washed
oftener._
_3. Get trash baskets for the streets._
_4. Plant vines over the telegraph poles._
_5. See about Main Street billboards--again._
_6. See about the laundry soft coal smoke--again._
_7. See about window boxes for the library--again._
And these things were partitioned out to committees one by one, some to
strike dry, shallow sand, some to get planted on the bare rock, and some
to hit black dirt and a sunny spot with a watering can, or even a
garden hose handy. You know them different sorts of soil under
committees?
Then up got Mis' Timothy Toplady--that dear, abundant woman. And we kind
of rustled expectant, because Mis' Toplady is one of the women that
looks across the edges of what's happening at the minute, and senses
what's way over there beyond. She's one of the women that never shells
peas without seeing beyond the rim of her pan.
And that night she says to Sodality:
"Ladies, I hear that up to the City next week there's going to be some
kind of a woman's convention."
Nobody said anything. Railroad wrecks, volcanoes, diamonds, conventions
and such never seemed real _real_ to us in the village.
"It seems to be some kind of a once-in-two-years affair," Mis' Toplady
went on, "and I read in the paper how it had a million members, and how
they came 10,000 to a time to their meetings. Well, now," she ends up,
serene, "I've rose to propose that, bein' it's so near, Sodality send a
delegate up there next week to get us some points."
"What points do we need, I should like to know," says Mis' Postmaster
Sykes, majestic. "Ain't we abreast of whatever there is to be abreast
of?"
"That's what I dunno," says Mis' Toplady. "Leave us find out."
"Well," says Mis' Sykes, "my part, expositions and conventions are
horrible to me. _I'm_ no club woman, anyhow," says she, righteous.
All the keeping still I ever done in my life when I'd ought to wouldn't
put nobody to sleep. I spoke right up.
"Ain't our Sodality a club, Mis' Sykes?" I says.
"Oh, our little private club here," says Mis' Sykes, "is one
thing--carried on quiet and womanly among ourselves. But a great big
public convention is no place for a woman that respects her home."
"Why," I says, "Mis' Sykes, that was the way we were arguing when clubs
began. It took quite a while to outgrow it. But ain't we past all that
by now?"
"Women's homes," she says, "and women's little home clubs are enough to
occupy any woman. A convention is men's business."
"It is if it is," says I, "but think how often it is that it ain't."
Mis' Toplady kept on, thoughtful.
"Anyway, I been thinking," she says, "why don't we leave the _men_ join
Sodality?"
I dunno if you've ever suggested a revolution? Whether I'm in favor of
any particular revolution or not, it always makes a nice, healthy
minute. And it's such an elegant measuring rod for the brains of folks.
"Why, how can we?" says Mis' Sykes. "We're the Married _Ladies'_
Cemetery Improvement Sodality."
"Is that name," says Mis' Toplady, mild, "made up out o' cast-iron, Mis'
Sykes?"
"But our constitution says we shall consist of fifty married ladies,"
says Mis' Sykes, final.
"Did we make that constitution," says I, "or did it make us? Are we
a-idol-worshiping our constitution or are we a-growing inside it, and
bursting out occasional?"
"If you lived in back a ways, Calliope,"--Mis' Sykes begun.
"Well," says I, "I might as well, if you're going to use _any_ rule or
any law for a ball and chain for the leg instead of a stepping-stone for
the feet."
Mis' Fire Chief Merriman looked up from her buttonholing.
"But we don't _want_ to do men's work, do we?" says she, distasteful.
"Leave them do their club work and leave us do our club work, like the
Lord meant."
"Well--us women tended Cemetery quite a while," says I, "and the death
rate wasn't confined to women, exclusive. Graves," says I, "is both
genders, Mis' Fire Chief."
Mis' State Senator Pettigrew, she chimed in.
"So was the park. So was paving Main Street. So was getting pure milk.
So was cleaning up the slaughter house--parse them and they're both
genders, all of them. Of course let's us take men into the Sodality,"
says she.
Mis' Sykes put her hand over her eyes.
"My g-g-grandmother organized and named Sodality," she said. "I can't
bear to see a change."
"Cheer up, Mis' Sykes," I says, "you'll be a grandmother yourself some
day. Can't you do a little something to let _your_ grandchildren point
back to? Awful selfish," I says, "not to give them something to brag
about."
We didn't press the men proposition any more. We see it was too
delicate. But bye and bye we talked it out, that we'd have a big meeting
of everybody, men and women, and discuss over what the town needed, and
what the Sodality ought to undertake.
"That'll be real democratic," says Mis' Sykes, contented. "We'll give
everybody a chance to express their opinion--and then afterwards we can
take up just what we please."
And we decided that was another reason for sending a delegate to the
woman's convention, to get ahold of somebody, somehow, to come down to
Friendship Village and talk to us.
"Be kind of nice to show off to somebody, too," says Mis' Fire Chief
Merriman, complacent, "what a nice, neat, up-to-date little town we've
got."
"Without the help of no great big clumsy convention either," Mis' Sykes
stuck in.
Then the first thing I heard was Mis' Amanda Toplady up onto her feet
nominating me to go for a delegate to that convention, fare paid out of
the Cemetery Improvement Treasury.
Guess what the first thought was that came to my head? Oh, ain't it like
women had been wrapped up in something that we're just beginning to peek
out of? Guess what I thought. Yes, that was it. When I spoke out my
first thought, I says:
"Oh, _ladies_, I can't go. I ain't got a rag fit to wear."
It took quite a while to persuade me. All the party dress I had was out
of the spare-room curtains, and I didn't have a wrap at all--I'm just
one of them jacket women. And finally I says to them: "You look here.
Suppose I write a note to the president of the whole thing, and tell her
just what clothes I have got, and ask her if anybody'd best go, looking
like me."
And that was what I did do. I kept a copy of the letter I wrote her. I
says:
"_Dear President_:
"Us ladies have heard about the meeting set for next week, and we
thought we'd send somebody up from our Friendship Village Married
Ladies Cemetery Improvement Sodality. And we thought we'd send me.
But I wouldn't want to come and have everybody ashamed of me. I've
only got my two years suit, and a couple of waists and one thin
dress--and they're all just every day--or not so much so. I'm
asking you, like I feel I can ask a woman, president or not. Would
you come at all, like that, if you was me.
"Respectfully,
"CALLIOPE MARSH."