that was the same way: the Bettses and the Doles and the Haskitts and
the Hennings. They lived in little shacks around, and the men worked in
the canning factory and the gas-works and on the tracks, and the women
helped out. And one or two of ’em had took down ill; and so it was
Silas, that likes to think of things first, that up and said “do
something.” And it was him put the notice in the papers a few nights
later to all citizens--and women--that’s interested in forming a Charity
Society to meet in Post-Office Hall, that he has the renting of.
I was turning in the stairway to the hall that night when I heard
somebody singing. And coming down the walk, with her hat on crooked and
its feather broke, was old Bess Bones. Bess has lived in Friendship
Village for years--and I always thought it was real good for the town
that she done so. For she is the only woman I ever knew of that ain’t
respectable, and ain’t rich or famous either, and yet that goes to
everybody’s house.
She does cleaning and scrubbing, and we all like to get her to do it,
she does it so thoroughly conscientious. She brings us in little
remedies she knows about, and vegetables from her own garden, and eggs.
Sometimes some of us asks her to set down to a meal. Once she brought me
a picked chicken of hers. And it’s good for Friendship Village because
we all see she’s human, and mostly with women like that we build a thick
wall and don’t give ’em a chance to even knock out a brick ever after.
“I was just goin’ to see you, Miss Marsh,” she says. “I got kind o’
lonesome and I thought I’d bring you over a begonia slip and set a
while.”
“I’m sorry, Bess,” I says. “I’m going to a meeting.”
“What kind of meetin’?” she says. “P’litical?”
“Yes,” I says, “something like that.” And that was true, of course,
being politics is so often carried on by private charity from the
candidates.
“I’d kind of like to go to a meeting again,” she says, wistful. “I sung
to revival meetings for a month once, when I was a girl.”
“I guess you wouldn’t like this one,” I says. “Come to see me to-morrow
and I’ll tell you about it.”
And then I went up-stairs and left her standing there on the sidewalk,
and I felt kind of ashamed and sneaking. I didn’t know why. But I says
to myself, comforting, that she’d probably of broke out and sung in the
middle of the meeting, if she had come. Her head ain’t right, like the
most of ours; but hers takes noisy forms, so you notice more.
Eleven of us turned out to the meeting, which was a pretty good
proportion, there being only fifteen hundred living in Friendship
Village all together. Silas was in the chair, formal as a funeral.
“The idear, as I understand it,” says Silas, when the meeting was open,
“is to get some Charity going. We’d ought to organize.”
“And then what?” asks Mis’ Toplady.
“Why, commence distributin’ duds and victuals,” says Silas.
“Well-a,” says Mis’ Toplady, “and keep on distributing them all our
lives?”
“Sure,” says Silas, “unless you’re goin’ to be weary in well-doing. Them
folks’ll keep right on being hungry and nekked as long as they live.”
“Why will they?” says Mis’ Toplady, puzzled.
“Well, they’re poor folks, ain’t they?” says Silas, scowling.
“Why, yes,” says Mis’ Toplady; “but that ain’t all they is to ’em, is
it?”
“What do you _mean_?” says Silas.
“Why, I mean,” says Mis’ Toplady, “can’t they be got goin’ so’s they
sha’n’t _be_ poor folks?”
Silas used his face like he smelled something. “Don’t you know no more
about folks than that?” says he. “Facts is facts. You’ve got to take
folks as they are.”
“But you ain’t taking folks nowheres. You’re leavin’ ’em as they are,
Silas,” says Mis’ Toplady, troubled.
Mis’ Silas Sykes spoke up with her way of measuring off just enough for
everybody.
“It’s this way Silas means,” she says. “Folks are rich, or medium, or
poor. We’ve got to face that. It’s always been so.”
Mis’ Toplady kind of bit at her lower lip a few times in a way she has,
that wrinkles up her nose meditative. “It don’t follow out,” she says,
firm. “My back yard used to be all chickweed. Now it’s pure potatoes.”
“Folks,” says Mis’ Sykes, real witherin’, “folks ain’t dirt.”
“That’s what I thought,” says Mis’ Toplady, dry.
Silas went right over their heads, like he does.
“We’ve all been doin’ what we could for these folks,” he says, “but we
ain’t been doin’ it real wise. It’s come to my notice that the Haskitts
had four different chickens give to ’em last Christmas. What we want to
do is to fix up some sort of a organization so’s our chickens won’t
lap.”
“Well,” says Timothy Toplady, “then let’s organize. That ain’t hard. I
move it be done.”
It was done, and Silas was made president, like he ever loves to be, and
Timothy treasurer, and me secretary, because they could get me to take
it.
“Now,” says Silas, “let’s get down to work and talk over cases.”
“_Cases!_” says Mis’ Toplady, distasteful. “They ain’t got the smallpox,
have they? Say _folks_.”
“I guess you ain’t very used to Charity societies,” says Silas,
tolerant. “Take the Haskitts. They ain’t got a pane o’ glass in their
house.”
“Nor no wood, much,” says Timothy. “When I went to get the rent the cat
was asleep on the cook-stove.”
“What rent do they give you, Timothy?” says Silas.
“Five dollars,” he says, pursin’ his lips.
“That’s only three per cent. on the money. I don’t see how you can
afford it.”
“I _am_ indulgin’ myself a little,” Timothy admits. “But I been thinkin’
o’ raisin’ it to six. One thing, though; I ain’t give ’em any repairs.
If I’d had a six-dollar family in there I’d had to fixed the
window-glass and cleaned out the cistern and mended the roof. It about
evens itself up.”
“Yes,” says Silas, agreeful, “I guess it does. Well, they can have some
boxes to burn, out of the store. I’ll take ’em on my list. _You_ can’t
go givin’ ’em truck, Timothy. If you do, they’ll come down on to you for
repairs. Now the Ricker’s....”
Abigail Arnold spoke up. “They’re awful,” she says. “Mis’ Ricker ain’t
fit to wash, and the children just show through. Ab’s arm won’t let him
work all winter.”
“You take him, Silas,” says Timothy. “He’s your own employee.”
Silas shakes his head. “He’s been chasin’ me for damages ever since he
got hurt,” he says.
“Ain’t he goin’ to get any, Silas?” says Mis’ Toplady, pitiful.
“Get any?” says Silas. “It was his own fault. He told me a week before
about them belts bein’ wore. I told him to lay off till I could fix ’em.
But no--he kep’ right on. Said his wife was sick and his bills was
eatin’ him up. He ain’t nobody to blame but his own carelessness. I told
him to lay off.”
I looked over to Mis’ Toplady, and she looked over to me. And I looked
at Abigail and at Mis’ Holcomb, and we all looked at each other. Only
Mis’ Sykes--she set there listening and looking like her life was just
elegant.
“Can’t you take that case, Mis’ Toplady?” says Silas.
“I’ll go and see them _folks_,” she says, troubled. And I guess us
ladies felt troubled, one and all. And so on during all the while we was
discussing the Doles and the Hennings and the Bettses and the rest. And
when the meeting was over we four hung around the stove, and Mis’ Sykes
too.
“I s’pose it’s all right,” Mis’ Toplady says. “I s’pose it is. But I
feel like we’d made a nice, new apron to tie on to Friendship Village,
and hadn’t done a thing about its underclothes.”
“I’m sure,” says Mis’ Sykes, looking hurt for Silas that had cut out the
apron, “I’m sure I don’t see what you mean. Faith, Hope, and Charity,
and the greatest of these is Charity. Does that mean what it says, or
don’t it?”
“Oh, I s’pose it does,” says Mis’ Toplady. “But what I think is this:
Ain’t there things that’s greater than the whole three as most folks
mean ’em?”
Mis’ Sykes, she sort of gasped, in three hitches. “Will you tell me
_what_?” she says, as mad as if she’d been faith, hope, and charity
personally.
“I dunno ...” says Mis’ Toplady, dreamy, “I dunno the name of it. But
ladies, it’s something. And I can feel it, just as plain as plain.”
* * * * *
It was three-four weeks before the new Charity Association got really to
running, and had collected in enough clothes and groceries so’s we could
start distributing. On the day before the next monthly meeting, that was
to be in Post-Office Hall again, we started out with the things, so’s to
make our report to the meeting. Mis’ Toplady and I was together, and the
first place we went to was Absalom Ricker’s. Gertie, Absalom’s wife, was
washing, and he was turning the wringer with his well hand, and his
mother was finishing vests by the stove, and singing a tune that was
all on a straight line and quite loud. And the children, one and all,
was crying, in their leisure from fighting each other.
“Well,” says Mis’ Toplady, “how you getting on _now_? Got many washings
to do?”
Gertie Ricker, she set down on the wood-box all of a sudden and begun to
cry. She was a pretty little woman, but sickly, and with one of them
folding spines that don’t hold their folks up very good.
“I’ve got three a week,” she says. “I can earn the rent all right.”
“I tell her,” says Absalom, “if she didn’t have no washings, then
there’d be something to cry for.”
But he said it sort of lack-luster, and like it come a word at a time.
“Do you get out any?” says Mis’ Toplady, to improve the topic.
“Out where?” says Gertie. “We ain’t no place to go. I went down for the
yeast last night.”
It kind of come over me: Washing all day and her half sick; Absalom by
the stove tending fire and turning wringer; his old mother humming on
one note; the children yelling when they wasn’t shouting. I thought of
their cupboard and I could see what it must hold--cold boiled potatoes
and beans, I bet. I thought of their supper-table ... of early mornings
before the fire was built. And I see the kind of a life they had.
And then I looked over to the two loaves of bread and the can of fruit
and the dozen eggs and the old coat of Timothy’s that we’d brought, and
it seemed to me these touched the spot of what was the trouble in that
house about as much as the smoke that oozed into the room from the
chimney. And I glanced over to Mis’ Toplady and there she set, with
ideas filterin’ back of her eyes.
“We’ve brought you a few things, being you’re sick--” she begun, sort of
embarrassed; but Absalom, he cut in short, shorter than I ever knew him
to speak.
“Who’s _we_?” he says.
“Why-a,” says Mis’ Toplady, stumbling some over her words, “the new
society.”
Absalom flushed up to the roots of his hair. “What society?” says he,
sharp.
Mis’ Toplady showed scairt for just a minute, and then she met his eyes
brave. “Why,” she says, “us--and you. You belong to it. We had it in the
paper, and met to the Post-Office Hall the other night. It’s for
everybody to come to.”
“To do what?” says Absalom.
“Why-a,” says Mis’ Toplady, some put to it, “to--to do nice things
for--for each other.”
“The town?” says Absalom.
“The town,” agrees Mis’ Toplady--and pressed ahead almost like she was
finding something to explain with. “We meet again to-morrow night,” says
she. “Couldn’t you come--you and Gertie? Come--and mebbe belong?”
Absalom’s mad cooled down some. First he looked sheepish and then he
showed pleased. “Why, I dunno--could we, Gertie?” he says.
“Is it dress-up?” says Gertie.
“Mercy, no,” says Mis’ Toplady, “it’s every-day. Or not so much so.
You’ll come, won’t you?”
“Mebbe,” says Gertie.
When we got outside, I looked at Mis’ Toplady, kind of took aback; and
it was so that she looked at me.
“Silas’ll talk charity his way to that meeting, you know,” I says. “I’m
afraid he’ll hurt Absalom and Gertie. I’m afraid....”
Mis’ Toplady looked kind of scairt herself. “I done that before I meant
to do it no more’n nothing in this world,” she says, “but I dunno--when
I begun handin’ ’em out stuff I was ashamed to do it without putting it
like I done.”
“I know,” I says, “I know.” And know I did. I’ve give things to poor
folks lots of times and glowed up my spine with a virtuous feeling--but
something big was always setting somewhere inside me making me feel
ashamed of the glow and ashamed of the giving. Who am I that I should be
the giver, and somebody else the givee?
We went to the Bettses’ and caught Mis’ Betts washing up two days’ of
dishes at four o’clock in the afternoon, and we heard about Joe’s losing
his job, and we talked to the canary. “We’d ought not to afford him,”
Mis’ Betts says, apologetic. “I always hate to take the money to get him
another package of seed--and we ain’t much of any crumbs.”
And we went to the Haskitts’ and found her head tied up with the
toothache. Folks looks sick enough with their heads tied up _around_;
but when it comes to up and down, with the ends sticking up, they always
look like they was going to die. And we went to the Doles’ and the
Hennings’ and carried in the stuff; and one and all them places, leaving
things there was like laying a ten-cent piece down on a leper, and
bowing to him to help on his recovery. And every single place, as soon
as ever we’d laid down the old clothes we’d brought, we invited ’em to
join the organization and to come to the meeting next night.
“What’s the name of this here club?” Joe Betts asks us.
By that time neither Mis’ Toplady nor me would have tied the word
“Charity” to that club for anything on earth. We told him we was going
to pick the name next night, and told him he must come and help.
“Do come,” Mis’ Toplady says, and when Mis’ Betts hung off: “We’re goin’
to have a little visiting time--and coffee and sandwiches afterwards,”
Mis’ Toplady adds, calm as her hat. And when we got outside: “I dunno
what made me stick on the coffee and the sandwiches,” she says, sort of
dazed, “but it was so kind of bleak and dead in there, I felt like I
just had to say something cheerful and human--like coffee.”
“Well,” I says, “us ladies can do the refreshments ourselves, so be the
rest of the Board stands on its head at the idee of doing ’em itself.
_As_ I presume likely it will stand.”
And this we both of us presumed alike. So on the way home we stopped in
to the post-office store and told Silas that we’d been giving out a good
many invitations to folks to come to the meeting next night, and mebbe
join.
“That’s good,” says Silas, genial; “that’s good. We need the dues.”
“We kind of thought coffee and sandwiches to-morrow night, Silas,” says
Mis’ Toplady, experimental, “and a little social time.”
“Don’t you go to makin’ no white-kid-glove doin’s out o’ this thing,”
says Silas. “You can’t mix up charity and society too free. Charity’s
religion and society’s earthy. And that’s two different things.”
“Earthy,” I says over. “Earthy! So’m I. Ain’t it a wonderful word,
Silas? Well, us two is going to do the coffee and sandwiches for
to-morrow night,” I added on, deliberate, determined and serene.
When Silas had done his objecting, and see he couldn’t help himself with
us willing to solicit the whole refreshments, and when we’d left the
store, Mis’ Toplady thought of something else: “I dunno,” she says, “as
we’d ought to leave folks out just because they ain’t poor. That,” she
says, troubled, “don’t seem real right. Let’s us telephone to them we
can think of that didn’t come to the last meeting.”
So we invited in the telephone population, just the same as them that
didn’t have one.
* * * * *
The next night us ladies got down to the hall early to do the finishing
touches. And on Daphne Street, on my way down, I met Bess Bones again,
kind of creeping along. She’d stopped to pat the nose of a horse
standing patient, hitched outside the barber-shop saloon--- I’ve seen
Bess go down Daphne Street on market-days patting the nose of every
horse one after another.
“Hello, Mis’ Marsh,” Bess says. “Are you comin’ down with another
meeting?”
“Yes, sir, Bess,” I says, “I am.” And then a thought struck me. “Bess,”
I says--able now to hold up my head like my skull intended, because I
felt I could ask her--“you come on up, too--you’re invited to-night.
Everybody is.”
Her face lit up, like putting the curtain up.
“Honest, can I?” she says. “I’d love to go to a meeting again--I’ve
looked in the window at ’em a dozen times. I’ll get my bread and be
right up.”
I tell you, Post-Office Hall looked nice. We’d got in a few rugs and
plants, and the refreshment table stood acrost one corner, with a screen
around the gas-plate, and the cups all piled shiny and the sandwiches
covered with white fringed napkins. And about seven o’clock in come
three pieces of the Friendship Village Stonehenge Band we’d got to give
their services, and they begun tuning up, festive. And us ladies stood
around with our hands under our white aprons; and you’d have thought it
was some nice, human doings instead of just duty.
Before much of anybody else had got there, in come them we’d invited
first: Absalom Ricker and Gertie, her looking real nice with a
new-ironed bow to her neck, and him brushed up in Timothy’s old coat and
his hair trained to a high peak. And the Bettses--Joe with his beard
expected to cover up where there wasn’t a necktie and her pretending the
hall was chilly so’s to keep her cloak on over whatever wasn’t
underneath. And the Haskitts, him snapping and snarling at her, and her
trying to hush him up by agreeing with him promiscuous. And Mis’ Henning
that her husband didn’t show up. We heard afterwards he was down in the
barber-shop saloon, dressed up to come but backed out after. And most
everybody else come--not only the original ’leven, but some of the
telephone folks, and some that the refreshment-bait always catches.
Silas come in late--he’d had to wait and distribute the mail--and when
he see the Rickers and the rest of them, he come tearing over to us
women in the refreshment corner.
“My dum!” he says, “look at them folks setting down there--Rickerses and
Henningses and Bettses and them--how we goin’ to manage with them here?
The idear of their coming to the meeting!”
“Ain’t it some their meeting, Silas?” I says. “The whole society was
formed on their account. Seems to me they’ve got a right--just like in
real United States Congress doings.”
“But, my dum, woman,” says Silas, “how we going to take up their cases
and talk ’em over with them setting there, taking it all in? Ain’t you
got no delicacy to you?” he ends up, ready to burst.
And of course, when you come to think of it, Congress always does do its
real business in committees, private and delicate.
Mis’ Toplady was ready for Silas.
“You’re right about it,” she says. “We can’t do that, can we? Suppose we
don’t do so very much business to-night? Let’s set some other talk
goin’. We thought mebbe--do you s’pose your niece would sing for us,
Silas?”
“Mebbe,” says Silas, some mollified, through being proud to sinning of
his visiting niece; “but I don’t like this here--” he was going on.
“Ask her,” says Mis’ Toplady. “She’ll do it for you, Silas.”
And Silas done so, ignorant as the dead that he’d been right down
managed. Then he went up stage and rapped to begin.
Well, of course I had to read the minutes, being secretary so, and I was
ready, having set up half the night before to make them out. And of
course, the job was some delicate; but I’d fixed them up what I thought
was real nice and impersonal. Like this:
“A meeting of citizens of Friendship Village was held, ----, in
Post-Office Hall, for the purpose of organizing a society to do
nice things for folks. (Then I give the names of the officers.)
Several plans was thought over for making presents to others and
for distributing the same. Several families was thought of for
membership. It was voted to have two kinds of members, honorary and
active. The active pay all the dues and provide the presents, but
everybody contributes what they can and will, whether work or
similar. A number of ways was thought of for going to work. Things
that had ought to be done was talked over. It was decided to hold
monthly meetings. Meeting adjourned.”
That seemed to me to cover everything real neat, nobody ever paying much
attention to the minutes anyway. I suppose that’s why they give ’em such
a small, stingy name. And when Silas got to reports of committees, Mis’
Toplady was no less ready for him. She hopped right up to say that the
work that had been put in her hands was all finished, the same as was
ordered, and no more to be said about it. And when it come to
Unfinished Business, there was me on my feet again to say that the work
that had been put in my hands wasn’t finished and there’d be more to be
said about it later.
Then Silas asked for New Business, and there was a pause. And all of a
sudden Absalom Ricker got on to his feet with his arm still in its
sling.
“Mr. President,” he says, so nice and dignified. And when Silas had done
his nod, Absalom went on in his soft, unstarched voice: “It’s a real
nice idear,” he says, “to get up this here club. I for one feel real
glad it’s going. You ain’t got up any line around it. Nobody has to be
any one thing in order to get in on it. I’ve thought for a long time
there’d ought to be some place where folks could go that didn’t believe
alike, nor vote alike, nor get paid alike. I’m glad I come out--I guess
we all are. Now the purpose of this here club, as I understand it, is to
do nice things for folks. Well, I’ve got a nice thing to propose for us
to do. I’ll pitch in and help, and I guess some of the rest of us will.
Soon as it comes warm weather, we could get a-hold of that elegant
galvanized iron swill-wagon that ain’t in use and drive it around the
town to do what it’s for. Us that don’t have work so awful steady could
do it, nice as a mice. I dunno whether that comes inside what the club
was intended for, but it would be doing a kind of a nice thing for
folks, my way of thinking.”
Up hopped Eppleby Holcomb--Eppleby being one of those prophet men that
can see faint signs sticking up their heads where there ain’t much of
anything showing.
“That’s the ticket, Mr. President,” says he. “Us that don’t have horses
or chickens can sense that all right. If Absalom moves it, I second it.”
“Will you help drive it around, Betts?” says Absalom. “Hank Haskitt? Ben
Dole? We’re all of us home a good deal of the time--we could keep it
goin’, amongst us. All right,” says he, when the men had nodded
matter-of-course nods, “sure I make it a motion.”
Silas put the motion, looking some dazed. And when it carried, hearty,
us ladies sitting over by the refreshment table, and that had bought the
wagon, we all burst out and spatted our hands. We couldn’t help it. And
everybody kind of turned around and passed some remark--and it made a
real nice minute.
Then Silas spoke up from the chair kind of sour--being in the Council
so, that wouldn’t run the wagon.
“The thing’s in the city tool-house now,” says he, “and it’s a good deal
in the way where it is. It had ought to be put somewheres.”
Up pipes Ben Dole, kind of important and eager, and forgot to address
the chair till he was half through, and then done so and ducked and
flushed and went on anyhow. And the purport of his remarks was, that he
could set that tank in the barn of his lot, that he didn’t have no horse
for and no use of, and keep it there till spring. And I seconded what he
meant, and it got itself carried, and Ben set down like he’d done a
thing, same as he had done.
Then, when Silas said what was the next pleasure of the meeting, Mis’
Toplady mentioned that they needed carpet rags to make up some rugs for
two-three places, and who could give some and help sew them? Mis’ Sykes
said she could, and Mame and Abigail and me and some more offered up,
and Mis’ Toplady wrote our names down, and, “How about you, Gertie?”
says she to Gertie Ricker.
Gertie looked scairt for a minute, and then my heart jumped pleasant in
its socket, _for I see Absalom nudge her_. Yes, sir, he nudged her to
say she would, and all of a sudden I knew that he wanted his wife to be
taking some part like the rest was; and she says, faint, “I guess so.”
And when Mis’ Sykes asked round, Mis’ Haskitt and Mis’ Henning said they
didn’t have much of any rags, but they could come and help sew the rags
of them that did have.
“So do,” says Mis’ Toplady, hearty, “and we’ll meet to my house next
Tuesday at two o’clock, sha’n’t we? And have a cup o’ tea.”
“What else is the pleasure of the meeting?” says Silas, balancing on his
toes as chairman-like as he knew how.