The Art and Loan Dress Exhibit recalls a story of my early association with Calliope Marsh in Friendship Village, when yet she was not well known to me—her humanity, her habit of self-giving, her joy in life other than her own.

Afterward I knew that I had never seen a woman more keenly and constantly a participant in the lives of others. She was hardly individuated at all. She suffered and joyed with others, literally, more than she did in her "own" affairs. I now feel certain that before we can reach the individualism which we crave—and have tried to claim too soon—we must first know such participation as hers in all conscious life—in all life, conscious or unconscious.

This is that early story, as I then wrote it down:

Calliope Marsh had been having a "small company." Though nominally she was hostess to twenty of us, invited there for six o'clock supper, yet we did not see Calliope until supper was done. Mis' Postmaster Sykes had opened the door for us, had told us to "walk up-stairs to the right an' lay aside your things," and had marshaled us to the dining-room and so to chairs outlining the room. And[Pg 155] there the daughters of most of the guests had served us while Calliope stayed in the kitchen, with Hannah Hager to help her, seasoning and stirring and "getting it onto the plates." Afterward, flushed and, I thought, lovably nervous, Calliope came in to receive our congratulations and presently to hear good-nights. But I, who should have hurried home to Madame Josephine, the modiste from town who that week called my soul her own, waited for a little to talk it over—partly, I confess, because a fine, driving rain had begun to fall.

We sat in the kitchen while Calliope ate her own belated supper on a corner of the kitchen table; and on another corner, thin, tired little Hannah Hager ate hers. And, as is our way in Friendship, Hannah talked it over, too—that little maid-of-all-work, who was nowhere attached in service, but lived in a corner of Grandma Hawley's cottage and went tirelessly about the village ministering to the needs of us all.

"Everything you hed was lovely, Miss Marsh," Hannah said with shining content and a tired sigh. "You didn't hev a single set-back, did you?"

"Well, I dunno," Calliope doubted; "it all tastes like so much chips to me, even now. I was kind o' nervous over my pressed ham, too. I noticed two o' the plates didn't eat all theirs, but the girls couldn't rec'lect whose they was. Did you notice?"

"No, sir, I didn't," Hannah confessed with a[Pg 156] shake of the head at herself. "I did notice," she amended brightly, "that Mis' Postmaster Sykes didn't make way with all her cream, but I guess ice-cream don't agree with her. She's got a kind o' peculiar stomach."

"Well-a, anybody hev on anything new?" Calliope asked with interest. "I couldn't tell a stitch anybody hed on. I don't seem to sense things when I hev company."

There was no need for me to give evidence.

"Oh!" Hannah said, as we say when we mean a thing very much, "didn't you see Lyddy Eider?"

"Seems to me I did take it in she hed on something pink," Calliope remembered.

Little Hannah stood up in her excitement.

"Pink, Miss Marsh!" she said. "I should say it was. Pink with cloth, w'ite. The w'ite," Hannah illustrated it, "went here an' so, in points. In between was lace an' little ribbon, pink too. An' all up so was buttons. An' it all rustled w'en she stirred 'round. An' it laid smooth down, like it was starched an' ironed, an' then all to once it'd slimpse into folds, soft as soft. An' every way she stood it looked nice—it didn't pucker nor skew nor hang wrong. It was dressmaker-made, ma'am," Hannah concluded impressively. "An' it looked like the pictures in libr'ry books. My! You'd ought 'a' seen Gramma Hawley. She fair et Lydia up with lookin' at her."

[Pg 157]

I, who was not yet acquainted with every one in Friendship, had already observed the two that day—brown, bent Grandma Hawley and the elaborately self-possessed Miss Eider, with a conspicuously high-pitched voice, who lived in the city and was occasionally a guest in the village. The girl, who I gathered had once lived in Friendship, was like a living proof that all village maids may become princesses; and the brooding tenderness of the old woman had impressed me as might a mourning dove mothering some sprightly tanager.

"Gramma Hawley brought her up from a little thing," Calliope explained to me now, "and a rich Mis' Eider, from the city, she adopted her, and Gramma let her go. I guess it near killed Gramma to do it—but she'd always been one to like nice things herself, and she couldn't get them, so she see what it'd mean to Lyddy. Lyddy's got pretty proud, she's hed so much to do with, but she comes back to see Gramma sometimes, I'll say that for her. Didn't anybody else hev on anything new?"

"No," Hannah knew positively, "they all come out in the same old togs. When the finger-bowl started I run up in the hall an' peeked down the register, so's to see 'em pass out o' the room. Comp'ny clo'es don't change much here in Friendship. Mis' Postmaster Sykes says yest'day, when we was ironin': 'Folks,' she says, 'don't dress as much here in Friendship as I wish't we did. Land knows,'[Pg 158] Mis' Sykes says, 'I don't dress, neither. But I like to see it done.'"

Calliope, who is sixty and has a rosy, wrinkled face, looked sidewise down the long vista of the cooking-stove coals.

"Like to see it done!" she repeated. "Why, I get so raving hungry to see some colored dress-goods on somebody seem's though I'd fly. Black and brown and gray—gray and brown and black hung on to every woman in Friendship. Every one of us has our clo'es picked out so everlastin' durable."

Hannah sympathetically giggled with, "Don't they, though?"

"My grief!" Calliope exclaimed. "It reminds me, I got my mother's calicoes down to pass 'round and I never thought to take them in."

She went to her new golden oak kitchen cabinet—a birthday gift to Calliope from the Friendship church for her services at its organ—and brought us her mother's "calicoes"—a huge box of pieces left from every wool and lawn and "morning housework dress" worn by the Marshes, quick and passed, and by their friends. Calliope knew them all; and I listened idly while the procession went by us in sad-colored fabrics—"black and brown and gray—gray and brown and black."

I think that my attention may have wandered a little, for I was recalled by some slight stir made by Hannah Hager. She had risen and was bending[Pg 159] toward Calliope, with such leaping wistfulness in her eyes that I followed her look. And I saw among the pieces, like a bright breast in sober plumage, a square of chambray in an exquisite color of rose.

"Oh—" said little Hannah softly, "hain't that just beauti-ful?"

"Like it, Hannah?" Calliope asked.

"My!" said the little maid fervently.

"It was a dress Gramma Hawley made for Lyddy Eider when she was a little girl," Calliope explained. "I dunno but what it was the last one she made for her. Pretty, ain't it? Lyddy always seemed to hanker some after pink. Gramma mostly always got her pink." Calliope glanced at Hannah, over-shoulder. "Why don't you get a pink one for then?" she asked abruptly; and, "When is it to be, Hannah?" she challenged her, teasingly, as we tease for only one cause.

On which I had pleasure in the sudden rose-pink of Hannah's face, and she sank back in her seat at the table corner in the particular, delicious anguish that comes but once.

"There, there," said Calliope soothingly, "no need to turn any more colors, 's I know of. Land, if they ain't enough sandwiches left to fry for my dinner."

When, presently, Calliope and I were in the dining-room and I was watching her "redd up" the table while Hannah clattered dishes in the kitchen,[Pg 160] I asked her who Hannah's prince might be. Calliope told me with a manner of triumph. For was he not Henry Austin, that great, good-looking giant who helped in the post-office store, whose baritone voice was the making of the church choir and on whom many Friendship daughters would not have looked unkindly?

"I'm so glad for her," Calliope said. "She ain't hed many to love besides Gramma Hawley—and Gramma's so wrapped up in Lyddy Eider. And yet I feel bad for Hannah, too. All their lives folks here'll likely say: 'How'd he come to marry her?' It's hard to be that kind of woman. I wish't Hannah could hev a wedding that would show 'em she is somebody. I wish't she could hev a wedding dress that would show them how pretty she is—a dress all nice, slim lines and folds laid in in the right places and little unexpected tri............