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.

[Pg 294]

"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,[Pg 295] 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[Pg 296] 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[Pg 297] 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 [Pg 298]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.

[Pg 299]

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[Pg 300] 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."

I kept her answer too, and this is what she said:

    "Dear Miss Marsh:

    "Just as I have told my other friends, let me tell you: By all means we want you to come. Do not disappoint us. But I believe that your club is not entitled to a delegate. So I am sending you this card. Will you attend the meeting, and the reception as my guest?"

And then her name. Sometimes, when I get discouraged about us, I take out that letter, and read it through.

I remember when the train left that morning, how I looked back on the village, sitting there in its big arm chair of hills, with green c............