Chapter V: Part 5

This starts the first debate of the day, Colonel Ackley contending that he has done the distance easily in an hour-ten, and Sim being frankly incredulous. Experts decide that it can be done with good roads. Colonel says he can do it in mud and can take the hills on high; says he never goes into low for anything. Bill Elwin, one of our gasless experts, reminds him of the time he couldn't get up Foster's Hill on second and was passed by three automobiles and fourteen road roaches. This is a distinct breach of etiquette on Bill's part, for he was riding with Colonel at the time and should have upheld him. The discussion is just getting good when Ackley's wife calls him home to breakfast over the 'phone, and the first tourist of the day comes in.

He has come from the west and has had heavy weather. He asks about the roads east. Gibb Ogle, our leading pessimist, hastens to inform him that very likely the roads are impassable, because the Highway Commissioners have been improving them. Out our way road improvement consists of tearing the roads out with a scraper and heaping them up in the middle. It takes a road almost a year to recover from a good, thorough case of improvement.

The stranger goes on dejectedly, and about nine A.M. young Andy Link roars in with his father's car, which he has taken away from the old man and converted into a racer by the simple process of taking off the muffler and increasing the noise to one hundred miles per hour. Andy declares that there has been no rain to the northwest and that he has done sixty miles already this morning, but can't get his carbureter to working properly, as usual. By this time several owners and a dozen critics have assembled, and the morning debate on gasoline versus motor spirit takes place. It ends a tie and both sides badly winded, when Pelty Amthorne drives in, very mad. He has been over to Paynesville and back. This is only twenty miles, but owing to the juicy and elusive condition of the roads, his rear wheels have traveled upward of two thousand miles in negotiating the distance and he has worn out two rear casings.

Right here I wish to state that Homeburg roads are not always muddy. We average three months of beautiful, smooth, resilient and joltless roads each year. The remaining nine months, however, I mention with pain. Illinois boosters say our beautiful rich black soil averages ten feet in depth, but I think this understates the case--at least our beautiful black dirt roads seem to be deeper than that in the spring. What we need in the spring in Illinois are locks and harbor lights, and the man who invents an automobile buoyant enough to float on its stomach and paddle its way swiftly to and fro on the heaving bosom of our April roads will be a public benefactor.

Pelty is justly indignant, because he had hoped to get another thousand miles of actual travel out of his tires. We sympathize with him, but in the middle of his grief Chet Frazier drives up. When he sees his ancient enemy, he climbs out of his car, comes hastily over to where Pelty is erupting, and starts trading autos with him.

Did you ever hear a couple of seasoned horse traders discussing each other's wares? Horse traders are considerate and tender of each other's feelings compared with two rural automobile owners who are talking swap with any enthusiasm.

"Hello, Pelty," says Chet. "Separator busted again?"

Everybody laughs, and Chet walks all around the machine. "Why, it ain't a separator at all," he finally says. "What is it, Pelty?"

"If you'd ever owned an automobile you'd know," grunts Amthorne, hauling off a tire. "What's become of that tinware exhibit you used to block up traffic with?"

Chet gets the laugh this time.

"That tinware exhibit stepped over from Jenniesburg in thirty minutes flat this morning," says Chet. "Lucky you weren't on the road. I'd have thrown mud on your wind shield."

"Say!" Pelty shouts. "Your machine couldn't fall ten miles in thirty minutes. Why don't you get a real automobile? What will you give me to boot for mine?"

They are off, and business in the vicinity suspends.

"I'll trade with you, Pelty," says Chet calmly--quite calmly. "Let me look it over."

He walks carefully around the auto, opens the hood and looks in. "Funny engine, isn't it? I saw one like that at the World's Fair."

Pelty has the hood of Chet's machine open too and is right there with the retort courteous. "Is this an engine or a steam heater?" he asks. "What pressure does she carry?"

"She never heats at all except when I run a long time on low," Chet says eagerly.

"Oh, yes," says Pelty, "I never have to go into low much--"

"Gosh!" Chet explodes. "When you go up Sanders Hill, they have to close two district schools for the noise."

"Only time you ever heard me I was hauling you up with your broken jack-shaft," snorts Pelty. "You ought to get some iron parts for your car. Cheese has gone out of style."

"You still use it for tires, I see," says Chet.

"Never mind," says Pelty wrathfully. "I get mileage out of my machine; I don't drive around town and then spend two days shoveling out carbon."

"Peculiar radiator you've got," says Chet, changing the subject. "Oh, I see; it's a road sprinkler. What do you get from the city for laying the dust?"

"I can stop that leak in two minutes with a handful of corn meal," says Pelty, busily surveying Chet's machine. "Do you still strip a gear on this thing every time you try to back?"

"Why do you carry a horn?" asks Chet. "You're wasteful; I heard your valves chattering when I was three blocks away."

"I didn't hear yours chatter much last Tuesday on Main Street," snorts Pelty. "You cranked that thing long enough to grind it home by hand."

"Ya-a! Talk, will you?" yells Chet earnestly. "Any man who begins carrying hot water out to his machine in a teakettle in September knows a lot about starting cars."

"Well, get down to business," says Pelty. "You want to trade, you say. I don't want that mess. It's an old back-number with tin springs, glass gears and about as much compression as a bandbox. Give me five hundred dollars and throw your automobile in. I need something to tie my cow to. She'd haul away anything that was movable."

"Give you five hundred dollars for that parody on a popcorn wagon?" snorts Chet. "Why, man, the poor old thing has to go into low to pull its shadow! You're delirious, Pelty. I'll tell you what I'll do. You give me a thousand dollars for my car, and I'll agree to haul that old calliope up to my barn, out of your way, and make a hen roost out of it. Come on now. It's your only chance."

Shortly after this they are parted by anxious friends, and the show is over. I've known Homeburg men to give up a trip to Chicago because Chet and Pelty began to trade their autos just before train time.

In New York an auto means comfort and pleasure and advertisement, like a fur-lined overcoat with a Persian lamb collar. But in Homeburg it means a lot more. It keeps us busy and happy and full of conversation and debate. It pulls our old, retired farmers out of their shells and makes them yell for improvements. It unbuckles our tight-wads and gives our ingenious young loafers something to do. It promotes town pride, and it keeps our money circulating so fast that every one has a chance to grasp a chunk as it goes by.

It has made us so independent of railroads that we feel now when buying a ticket to Chicago as if we were helping the poor old line out. Our Creamery has been collecting milk and shipping butter in an old roadster with a wagon bed thorax for a year. Two of our rural route mail carriers use small machines, except in wet weather, and good-roads societies in our vicinity are the latest fad. We raised one thousand five hundred dollars last spring to bring the Cannon Ball Trail from Chicago to Kansas City through our town, and our hotel-keeper contributed one hundred dollars of it. He says we'll be on the gas-line tourist route to the coast after the trail has been marked and drained and graded up well.

But mostly the automobile means freedom to us. We're no longer citizens of Homeburg but of the congressional district. We're neighbors to towns we hadn't heard of ten years ago, and the horizon nowadays for most of us is located at the end of a ten-gallon tank of gasoline. Why, in the old days, you had to go fifty miles east and double back to get into the north part of our county, and more of us had crossed the ocean than had been to Pallsbury in the north tier of townships. Now our commercial clubs meet together alternate months, and about seventeen babies in our town have proud grandparents up there.

That's part of what the automobile means to us, Jim. Can you blame me for being so interested in a new one? Maybe it will have some contrivance for scaring cows out of a narrow road.

X

THE HOMEBURG TELEPHONE EXCHANGE

_What Would Happen if We Tried to Get Along With a City Operator_

All right, Jim! Having now completed the task of telephoning to Murray Hill several thousand and something, I'm ready to join you at luncheon. I'm glad I telephoned. I won't have to spend the afternoon doing it now and, besides, I feel so triumphant. I got through this time without forgetting to get a nickel first. I usually go into one of those wooden overcoats and go through all the agonies of elbowing my way through half a dozen centrals into some one's ear several miles away, and then discover that I haven't anything but a half dollar. Then I have to stop and begin all over again.

Telephoning is one of the prices you have to pay to live in a metropolis, Jim. I suppose it will always hurt me to pay a nickel for telephoning. Seems like paying for a lungful of air--and bad air at that. Coming as I do from the simple bosom of the nation, where talk over the wires is so cheap that you sometimes have to wait half an hour while two women are planning a church social over your line, I can't seem to resign myself to paying the price of a street-car ride every time I breathe a few sentiments into a telephone. Now the street cars never fail to dazzle me. They are a wonderful bargain. When we are too tired to walk in Homeburg, we have to pay at least fifty cents for a horse from the livery stable, unless some automobile is going our way. Nothing is more pleasant to me than to slip a nickel to a street-car conductor and ride ten miles on it. But when we want to use a telephone, do we go through all this ceremony of dropping a nickel into a set of chimes? Not much. My bill at home at five cents per telephone call would be more than my income. Why, many a time I've called up as many as eight people in the west part of town to know whether the red glow in the sky was the sunset or the Rolling Mills at Paynesville burning down! And almost every day I telephone McMuggins, the druggist, to collar a small boy and send up an Eltarvia Cigar. If that call cost me five cents, I would be practically smoking ten-cent cigars, and all Homeburg would regard me with suspicion.

I suppose it will be a hundred years before we get over saying "Great invention, isn't it?" every time we have finished a satisfactory session over the telephone. But I don't think you city people realize how much of an invention it is. Of course, the telephone is more important in New York than it is in Homeburg. If you had to go back to the old-fashioned stationary messenger boy to do your business here, a good share of the city would have to close out at a sacrifice. You do things with your telephones which dazzle us entirely, like talking into parlor cars, calling up steamships, buying a railroad and saying airily "Charge it," and tossing a few hectic words over to Pittsburgh or Cincinnati at five dollars per remark, as casually as I would stop in and ask Postmaster Flint why in thunder the Chicago papers were late again--and that is about as casual as anything I know of.

I'm willing to admit that your telephones are much more wonderful than ours, not only because of what they do for you, but because of the amount of money they can get out of you without causing revolutions and indignation meetings. Why, they tell me that business firms here think nothing of paying one hundred dollars a year for a telephone! At home once, when we tried to raise the farmer lines from fifty cents to a dollar a month, we almost had to fortify the town. I take off my hat to a telephone which can collect one hundred dollars a year from its user without using thumbscrews. It must have more ways of working for you than I have ever dreamed of.

No, the telephone in Homeburg is a very ordinary thing, and we could get along without it quite nicely as far as exertion is concerned, it being only a mile from end to end of the town. But if we had to do without our telephone girls, we'd turn the whole town into a lodge of sorrow and refuse to be comforted. I know of no grander invention than the country town telephone girl. She's not only our servant and master, but she's our watch-dog, guardian, memorandum book, guide, philosopher and family friend. When our telephone can't give us convenience enough, she supplies the lack. When brains at both ends are scarce, she dumps hers into the pot; and when the poor overworked instrument falls down on any task, she takes up the job. She not only gives our telephone a voice, but she gives it feet and hands and something to think with.

I got into a big telephone exchange once and watched it for over a minute before I was fired out. It was a very impressive sight--rows on rows of switchboards, hundreds of girls, thousands of little flashing lights, millions of clickety-clicks and not enough conversation to run a sewing circle up to refreshment time. The company was very proud of it, and I suppose it was good enough for a city--but, pshaw, it wouldn't do Homeburg for a day. If some one were to offer that entire exchange to us free of charge, we'd struggle along with it for a few hours, and then we'd rise up en masse and trade it off for Carrie Mason, our chief operator, throwing in whatever we had to, to boot.

Our exchange is in the back room of the bank building up-stairs. You could put the entire equipment in a dray. Our switchboard is about as big as an old-fashioned china closet and has three hundred drops. I suppose an up-to-date telephone manager has forgotten what "drops" are and you can't be expected to know. But out our way the telephone companies are coöperative, and as every subscriber owns a share, we all take a deep personal interest in the construction and operation of the plant, discussing the need of a new switchboard and the advantage of cabling the Main Street lead, in technical terms.

Well, anyway, a drop is a little brass door which falls down with a clatter whenever the telephone which is hitched to that particular drop wants a connection. And Miss Carrie Mason, our chief operator, sits on a high stool with a receiver strapped over her rick of blond hair jabbing brass plugs with long cords attached into the right holes with unerring accuracy, and a reach which would give her a tremendous advantage in any boarding-house in the land. Sometimes she has one assistant, and in rush hours she has two. But on Sunday afternoons and other quiet times she holds down the whole job alone for hours at a time; and when I go up to her citadel and ask her to jam a toll call through forty miles of barbed wire and miscellaneous junk to Taledo by sheer wrist and lung power, she entertains me as follows while I wait:

"Yes, indeed, I'll get your call through as soon as I can, but the connection's--Nmbr--awful--Nmbr--bad to-day--Nmbr--They're not at home, Mrs. Simmons; they went to Paynesville--Nmbr--I'll ring again--Nmbr--Hello, Doctor Simms, Mrs. McCord told me to tell you to come right out to the farm; the baby's sick--Nmbr--The train's late to-day, Mrs. Bane, you've got plenty of time--Nmbr--I can't get them, Mrs. Frazier. I'll call up next door and leave word for them to call you--Nmbr (To me: "Hot to-day, isn't it? I tell 'em we ought to have an electric fan up here.")--Nmbr--("It would keep us better tempered.")--Nmbr--Oh, Mrs. Horn, will you tell Mrs. Flint when she comes home that Mrs. Frazier wants her to call her up?--Nmbr--Now, Jimmy, you haven't waited two seconds. I know you're anxious to talk to Phoeb, but she isn't home; she's at the cooking club--Nmbr--Cambridge, do see if you can't get through to Taledo. I've a party here that's in a hurry--Nmbr. (To me: "That Taledo line's awful. It's grounded somewhere on that farmer's line west of Tacoma.")--Nmbr--Yes, Mr. Bell, I'll call you quick as he comes in his office; I can see his door from my window--Nmbr--No, Mrs. Bane, the doctor's just gone out to the McCord farm. If you hurry, you can stop him as he goes past. He left about five minutes ago--Nmbr--Gee, Paynesville, you gave me an awful ring in the ear then! No, you can't get through, the line's busy. Well, you'll have to wait. I can't take the line away from them--Nmbr--Oh! (very softly) Hello, Sam. Oh, pretty well. I'm most melted--wait a minute--Nmbr--Hello, Sam (long silence) Oh, get out! My ear's all full of taffy--wait a minute--Nmbr--Nmbr--No, Mr. Martin, there hasn't been any one in his office all day. I think he's gone to Chicago--Hello, Sam--wait a minute, Sam--Nmbr--Nmbr--Hello, Sam--Say, I'm all alone and jumping sidewise. Call me up about six (very softly). G'by, Sam--Nmbr. Oh, Mrs. Lucey, is Mrs. Simms at your house? Tell her her husband will be home late to supper, he's gone out in the country--Hello. Hello. _Hello_, Taledo. Is your party ready? (To me: "All right, here they are. You'll have to talk pretty loud.") Hello, Taledo. All ready--Nmbr."

That is a fair sample of Carrie. We couldn't keep house without her. And that's why I feel an awful pang of jealousy when I hear that lobster Sam talking to her. Maybe it's just the ordinary joshing which goes on over the toll lines in the off hours. But maybe it isn't. Wherever Sam is and whoever he is, he is a danger to Homeburg. Perhaps he is a lineman at Paynesville, and then again he may be a grocer in some crossroads town near by, with a toll telephone in the back of his store. But if he talks to Carrie long enough and skilfully enough, he will come up to Homeburg, marry her, and bear her away to his lair, far from our bereaved ears. We've lost several telephone girls that way, and when a telephone girl knows all of your habits and customs and those of your friends, and can tell just where to find you or to find whomever you want found, and has the business of the town down to the smallest details stowed away in her capable head, it messes things up dreadfully to have her leave us high and dry and go to housekeeping--which any one can do.

Telephone girls are born, not made, in towns like Homeburg. We require so much more of them than city folks do. When my wife wants to know if hats are being worn at an afternoon reception, she calls up Carrie. Ten to one Carrie has caught a scrap of conversation over the line and knows. But if she hasn't, she will call up and find out. When a doctor leaves his office to make a call, he calls up Carrie, and she faithfully pursues him through town and country all day, if necessary. When we are preparing for a journey, we do not go down to the depot until we have called up Carrie and have found out if the train is on time, and if it isn't, we ask her to call us when it is discovered by the telegraph operator. And when our babies wander away, we no longer run frantically up and down the street hunting for them. We ask Carrie to advertise for a lost child seven hands high, and wearing a four-hour-old face-wash; and within five minutes she has called up fifteen people in various parts of the town and has discovered that said child is playing Indian in some back yard a few blocks away.

Carrie is also our confidante. I hate to think of the number of things Carrie knows. Prowling into our lines while we are talking, as she does, in search of connections to take down, she overhears enough gossip to turn Homeburg into a hotbed of anarchy if she were to loose it. But she doesn't. Carrie keeps all the secrets that a thousand other women can't. She knows what Mrs. Wimble Horn said to Mrs. Ackley over the line which made Mrs. Ackley so mad that the two haven't spoken for three years. She knows just who of our citizens telephone to Paynesville when Homeburg goes dry, and order books, shoes, eggs, and hard-boiled shirts from the saloons up there to be sent by express in a plain package. She knows who calls up Lutie Briggs every night or two from Paynesville, and young Billy Madigan would give worlds for the information, reserving only enough for a musket or some other duelling weapon. She knows how hard it is for one of our supposedly prosperous families to get credit and how long they have to talk to the grocer before he will subside for another month.

There's very little that Carrie doesn't know. I shudder to think what would happen if Carrie should get miffed and begin to divulge. Once we had a telephone girl who did this. She was a pert young thing who had come to town with her family a short time before. It was a mistake to hire her--telephone girls should be watched and tested for discretion from babyhood up--but our directors did it, and because she showed a passion for literature and gum and very little for work, they fired her in three months. She left with reluctance, but she talked with enthusiasm; and Homeburg was an armed camp for a long time.

Goodness knows we have enough trouble with our telephone even with Carrie to supply discretion for the whole town. Party lines and rubber ears are the source of all our woe. You know what a party line is, of course. It's a line on which you can have a party and gab merrily back and forth for forty minutes, while some other subscriber is wildly dancing with impatience. Most of our lines have four subscribers apiece, and it's just as hard to live in friendliness on a party line as it is for four families to get along good-naturedly in the same house.

There's Mrs. Sim Askinson, for instance. She's a good woman and her pies have produced more deep religious satisfaction at the Methodist church socials than many a sermon. But St. Peter himself couldn't live on the same telephone line with her. She's polite and refined in any other way, but when she gets on a telephone line she's a hostile monopolist. Early in the morning she grabs it and holds it fiercely against all comers, while talking with her friends about the awful time she had the night before when the cold water faucet in the kitchen began to drip. Mrs. Askinson can talk an hour on this fertile subject, stopping each minute or two to say, with the most corrosive dignity, to some poor victim who is wiggling his receiver hook: "Please get off this line, whoever you are. Haven't you any manners? I'm talking, and I'll talk till I get through." And then, like as not, when she's through, she'll leave the receiver down so that no one else will be able to talk--thus holding the line in instant readiness when another fit of conversation comes on. Seven party lines have revolted in succession and have demanded that Mrs. Askinson be taken off and wished on to some one else, and Sim is mighty worried. His wife has lost him so many friends that he doubts if he will be able to run for the town board next year.

We're a nice, peaceable folk in Homeburg, face to face. But like every one else, we lay aside our manners when we get on the wires and push and elbow each other a good deal. Funny what a difference it makes when you are talking into a formless void to some strange human voice. I've never said: "Get out of here," to any one in my office yet, but when some one intrudes on my electric conversation, even by mistake, I boil with rage and I yell with the utmost fervor and indignation: "Get off this line! Don't you know any better than to ring in?" And the other person comes right back with: "Well, you big hog, I've waited ten minutes, and I'll ring all I want!" And then I say something more, and something is said to me that eats a little semicircular spot out of the edge of my ear. It's mighty lucky neither of us knows who is talking. Suppose Carrie should tell. As I say, Carrie holds us in the hollow of her hand.

But the rubber ear is even worse than the Berkshire manners. A rubber ear is one that is always stretching itself over some telephone line to hear a conversation which doesn't concern it. For a long time we were singularly obtuse about this little point of etiquette in the country. The fact that all the bells on a line rang with every call was a constant temptation to sit in when we weren't wanted. We listened to other people's conversations when we felt like it. It amused us, and why shouldn't we? We rented our telephone and we had a right to pick it up and soak in everything that was going through it.

When the exchange was first put in, fifteen years ago, more than one Homeburg woman used to wash her dishes with the telephone receiver strapped tightly to her ear, dropping into the conversation whenever she felt that she could contribute something of interest. As for the country lines, it was the regular thing, and nobody minded it at all. That was what killed the first line out of Homeburg. It had fourteen subscribers and every one was hitched on the same wire. For a month everything went nicely. Then old man Miller got mad at two neighbors who were sort of sizing him up over the wire, and quit speaking to them. And Mrs. Ames was caught gossiping, and a quarrel ensued in which about half the line took part, all being on the wire and handy. Young Frank Anderson heard Barney DeWolf making an engagement with his girl and licked Barney. One thing led to another until not a subscriber would speak to another one, and the line just naturally pined away.

Etiquette has tightened up a lot since then. Still, we have rubber ears to-day, and they cause half the trouble in Homeburg. You see, the telephone has entirely driven out the back fence as a medium of gossip. It offers so much wider opportunities. Nowadays it does all the business which begins with: "Don't breathe this to a soul, but I just heard--" and half the time some uninvited listener with an ear like a graphophone horn is drinking in the details, to be published abroad later. Mrs. Cal Saunders had our worst case of gummy ear up to a couple of years ago, and broke up two engagements by listening too much. But she doesn't do it any more. Clayt Emerson cured her.

Something had to be done for the good of the town and Clayt, who lived on the same line with her, conceived the plan of letting Mrs. Saunders hear something worth while just to keep her busy and happy. So he called up Wimble Horn and talked casually until he heard the little click which meant that Mrs. Saunders had focused her large receptive ear on the conversation. Then he told Horn that he was going to burn the darn stuff up, trade being bad, anyway. Wimble offered to help him, and for three nights they talked mysteriously about the crime, mentioning more plotters, while Mrs. Cal hung on the line with her eyes bulging out, and confided the secret to all the friends she had.

Finally on Friday night, Policeman Costello, who was in the deal, told Clayt that the expected had happened and that Mrs. Saunders had told him about the horrible incendiary plot which was being hatched. Saturday night came, and Costello refused to go to Clayt's store unless Mrs. Saunders would come and denounce the villains, who were among our most respected citizens. So Mrs. Saunders finally agreed, in fear and trembling, and, taking a couple of her firmest friends, she led Policeman Costello down to Clayt's restaurant at midnight, and, sure enough, there was a light in the back part. Costello burst open the door, and when they all rushed down on the scene of the crime, they found Clayt and half a dozen of us manfully smoking up a box of stogies which a slick traveling man had unloaded on him. Mrs. Saunders insisted that crime was about to be committed and got so excited that she repeated Clayt's exact words--in the middle of which a great light came to her, and she said she was going home.

"I think you had better," said Clayt, "and I'll tell you something more. You listen to other people's affairs more than is good for you."

But she hasn't since.

Of course you don't have these troubles. But whenever I see New York people harboring telephones in their homes which absolutely decline to be civil until you feed them five cents, I think of our Homeburg blessings and am content. Six dollars a year buys a telephone at home, and about the only families which haven't telephones are a few widows who live frugally on nothing a year, and old Mr. Stephens, who has one hundred thousand dollars loaned out on mortgages and spends half an hour picking out the biggest eggs when he buys half a dozen. There isn't a farm within ten miles which isn't connected with the town, and while the desk 'phone is a novelty with us and we still have to grind away at a handle to get Central, we can put just as much conversation into the transmitter and take just as much out of the receiver as if we were connected with a million telephones. Our Homeburg 'phones are old-fashioned; and the lines sound as if eleven million bees were holding indignation meetings on them, but they have made a big family out of three whole counties, and I guess they will take care of us all right--so long as Carrie holds out and we can keep that Sam fellow where he belongs.

XI

A HOMEBURG SCHOOL ELECTION

_Where Woman is Allowed to Vote and Man Has To_

Well, Jim, you've taken me to see a great many wonderful sights in this municipal monstrosity of yours, but I don't believe one of them has interested me as much as this parade. I've worn three fat men on my toes for an hour to get a chance to watch it, but it was worth the agony. Think of it--at home we are doing well to get an attendance of two thousand at a fire. Here in New York are several hundred thousand people stopping their mad grabs at limousines and country houses, and blocking up the streets to watch a few women parading in the interest of the ballot for psyche knots as well as bald heads. It's wonderful! How did the women persuade you to do it? I can't help thinking that they lost a tremendous chance for the cause. Think how much money the ladies would have made if each one had worn a sandwich board advertising some new breakfast food or velveteen tobacco! With a crowd like this reading every word, they could have charged enough to pay the expenses of a whole campaign!

It's the crowd that interested me. As far as the parade went, it wasn't so much. Half a hundred women in cloaks and staffs setting off on foot for Washington or Honolulu isn't terrifically exciting. I'd a lot rather go down the line about twenty or thirty miles and watch them come in to roost at night. There would be some inhuman interest in that. But what does all this mob mean? Have you New Yorkers gone crazy over suffrage? What! Just the novelty of the thing? Well, let me tell you then, you are goners! You may not want suffrage now, but if the women are going to choke traffic every time they spring a novelty, you're going to have to grant them suffrage just to get the chance to attend to business now and then.

Me? Of course I'm a suffragist. I'm a suffragist on twenty counts. No, thanks, I won't argue the question now, because we have to get over to the hotel for dinner in an hour or two, and there's no use starting a thing you will have to leave in the middle. I'll just tell you the last count to save time, and let it go at that. I'm a suffragist because I want the rest of mankind to have what we've had in Homeburg for the last twenty years or so. We've been through the whole thing. Whenever a man's been through anything, he naturally isn't content until he can stand by and watch some other man get his. Understand? I'm for suffrage in aged little New York. I want you to have it and have it a plenty. And I want to watch you while you're having it. It's a grand thing when you've got used to it. It will do you good, Jim, just like medicine.

Do women vote in Homeburg? Of course they do. I'd like to see anybody stop them. I don't mean that they vote for President. That is, they won't until next time. It's only the more important elections that they take part in. Oh, I know you folks in the big town think that unless you're voting for governor or for the ringleaders of your city government, the job isn't worth while. But that's where you differ from Homeburg. We men vote for President and get a good deal of fun out of the campaign. It's a favorite masculine amusement, and the women don't interfere with us. But it's not important. I mean it's not important to Homeburg. We stand up all summer and tear our suspender buttons off trying to persuade each other that Homeburg's future depends on who reviews the inaugural parade at Washington; but it isn't so, and we know it.

The really burning question in Homeburg is the make-up of the next school board. That is the election which paralyzes business, splits families, and sours friendships. And let me just convey to you in a few brief words, underscored with red ink, the fact that women vote in the Homeburg school elections. If you want to see real, concentrated politics with tabasco sauce trimmings, go to Homeburg or some other small town which is fond of its school system and watch the women getting out the vote.

Don't waste your time by coming the day before election. Don't even expect to see any excitement in the morning. We don't smear our school election troubles all over the almanac. We have the convulsion quickly and get over it. You could stray into Homeburg on the morning of a school election and not suspect that anything was going on except, perhaps, a general funeral. Absolute quiet reigns. People are attending to business with the usual calm.

You can tell that there is an election on by the little flags stuck out a hundred feet from the engine-house doors, but that's the only way. Inside the judges sit waiting for business about as successfully as a cod fisher on the banks of the Mississippi. Now and then some one strays in and casts a vote. By noon half a dozen are in the ballot box. The nation is safe, the schools are progressing satisfactorily, the ticket is going through without a kick. Even the candidates stop standing around outside peddling their cards, go home to dinner and forget to come back.

Pretty placid, eh? You bet it is. You know all about the calm before the storm and the little cloud the size of the man's hand which comes up about eight bells and does a general chaos business without any advance notices. Well, that cloud in our school elections is impersonated by Mrs. Delia Arbingle, and she usually arrives at the polls about three P.M. with a new ticket, twenty warlike followers, and several thousand assorted snorts of defiance.

That's when the storm breaks--and it's a whole lot bigger than a man's hand by that time. Delia is a mighty plentiful woman physically, and when she gets her war paint on, she's a regular cloudburst. As I say, about three o'clock or thereabouts, we suddenly wake up to the fact that we have a school election in our midst, and that unless we arise as true men and patriots, it will soon be at our throats. How do we find it out? Our women folks tell us. You never saw such devoted women folks, or such determined ones, either. The minute Delia leaves her house with her marauding band in her annual attempt to get the scalp of the high school principal who whipped her oldest son seventeen years ago, the women of Homeburg _rise_. And we men go and vote.

Now, we're not enthusiastic about voting. We're not afraid of Delia. We've seen her insurge too often. But we go and vote, anyway. We go by request. You've never had your loving wife come in and request you to vote, have you, Jim? Well, you've got something coming. It's a request which you're going to grant. You may not want to, but that has nothing to do with the case. This is about the way it happens in Homeburg: I am sitting in my office. I've got a lot of work on hand, and it's no use to vote, anyway, and, to tell the truth, I had forgotten all about it. Suddenly the telephone bell rings: I answer it. Here's my cross-section of the conversation:

"Hello? Oh, hello!... No, I haven't voted yet.... Pretty busy to-day.... You're coming down?... No, I don't want to vote.--What's the use? It's the same old.... Now, my dear, it's just the same old row. She can't get any.... But I tell you I'm busy. You go on and.... Yes, of course I'm an American citizen, but I don't get a salary for it. I'm trying to earn.... Well, five minutes to cast a useless vote is.... Oh, all right. Anything to please you.... No, I'll not call up Judge Hicks. He's old enough to vote by himself.... Oh, all right.... Now, look here, my dear, I can't ask Fleming to do that. His wife is a friend of Mrs. Arbingle's.... Yes, I can say that, but it would be a threat.... Oh, the schools will run anyway. Now, don't get excited.... All right, doggone it, it'll make a regular fool of me though!... Good-by.

"Gosh."

I am mopping my forehead while I say that. I'm going to vote and, what is more, I'm going over to get Judge Hicks, who is a cross old man-eater, and get him to vote, and then I am going to call up Fleming, who would otherwise vote against us, and tell him that if he doesn't support our ticket, our grocery account will go elsewhere. I hate to do that like the mischief. It isn't considered ethical in national elections. But somehow we can't stop and discuss these fine points at 3.15 P.M. with our loving but excited wives. They don't seem to allow it.

I get into my coat, pretty cross, and go down-stairs. Homeburg is frantically awake. Down the street scores of patriots are marching to the polls. They are not marching in lock-step, but most of them are under guard just the same. Mrs. Chet Frazier, pale but determined, is towing Chet out of his store. Mrs. Wimble Horn is hurrying down the street with an umbrella in one hand and Wimble in the other. From the post-office comes Postmaster Flint emitting loud wails. It is against the law to leave the post-office unoccupied, but he can thresh that out with his wife at home after he has voted. Attorney Briggs was going to Chicago this afternoon, but I notice he is coming back from the depot. Mrs. Briggs is bringing him. If I know anything about rage, Attorney Briggs is ready to masticate barbed wire. His arms are making a blue haze as they revolve. But he's coming back to vote. He can go to Chicago to-morrow, but the nation must be saved before five o'clock.

I do my errands, losing one friend at Fleming's and considerable dignity at the judge's, because the judge is an old widower and mighty outspoken. Then I hurry back and go to the polls arm in arm with my loving wife. We have to wait our turn outside the engine house. From all corners of town the votes roll in, most of them under convoy. It's a weird mixture--the men sullen and sheepish, the women inspired and terrible. Even the candidates, most of whom are men, are embarrassed. They are peddling tickets frantically, and whenever they falter and show signs of running, their wives hiss something into their ears and brace them up again.

The two hostile forces are eying each other with horrid looks. Mrs. Arbingle is quiet but deadly. I never saw so much hostility coated over one face as there is on hers. She is in her glory. This time she is going to unmask the hosts of corruption, including those who will not call on her, cave in the school ring, boot out the incompetents, and see justice done to her son at last. Mrs. Wert Payley, who generally leads the other side, has higher ideals, of course, and isn't so red in the face. But she is hostile too. No viperess shall tread on the school system if she can help it! She keeps her lieutenants hustling, and now and then she looks over the crowd of captive men on the enemy's side and issues a command. Then some woman talks to her husband, and he gets red and mad and wags his arms. But in the end he goes over and talks to a man on the other side. And then that conversation spreads like a prairie fire, and the men knot up into a cluster, and hard words are used, and a lot more friendships go into the back shop for repairs.

Five o'clock is coming fast. Mrs. Payley looks over her list. Young Ad Summers has refused to budge from his shop. Miss Ri Hawkes blushes a little and then goes away to a telephone. Pretty soon Ad appears. He's panting, into the bargain. He gets in line, votes, and Ri walks away with him. There is a sigh of relief from the Payley cohorts now because old man Thompson is coming. He is over ninety and hates like thunder to go out and vote, but he can't help himself. He has lived in a wheeled chair for ten years and has to go wherever his granddaughter wheels him. He passes in, muttering.

Only five minutes more. The excitement is intense. Hurrah! Some one has gotten the telegraph operator's goat. He's coming on the run. That probably means he'll go to the next dancing-club party. Judge Hicks appears, four women around him. He is mad, but they are triumphant and they look scornfully at me, saying "chump" with their eyes. He votes. There is a commotion at the corner because Gibb Ogle has attempted in a mild way to be corrupted. He wants to know why he can't sleep in the South School basement. The women are indignant, and appoint two husbands to deal with him. Gibb votes. Bang! The polls are closed. It's all over but the counting.

We'd like to go back to work, but the suspense is too great. Not that we have any suspense, but our wives have; and if we are worthy of the name of men, we must help them endure it, even if we ourselves are not interested in the schools. So we hang around and fume over the jungle-fingered judges who take as much time as if they were enumerating the fleas of Africa. Finally a cheer comes from the front of the crowd. The women beside us gasp anxiously. Which side cheered? Hurrah! There's Mrs. Payley waving her handkerchief. We win.

After that, we men can go. The schools have been saved by a vote of 453 to 78, but it was no thanks to us. No, indeed! If it weren't for the women where would our schools be?

We've had women's suffrage in our midst for almost twenty years, as I say, and looking back over it I can't see a single dull moment politically. From the day when an indulgent State gave them permission, our women have guarded the schools at the ballot box. They've done a thorough and painstaking job, and I must say the schools have improved a lot. But they have sprung a lot of political ideas which have made the old-timers sit up with startled looks and scratch their heads hopelessly.

That's what you are going to find out, Jim, when woman begins to vote for herself around here and to vote you into the bargain. She isn't going to play the game according to the old rules. She has no use for them. She has her own way of going about things politically, and while it is effective, its wear and tear on mankind is terrific. When the Homeburg women first attempted to place a woman on the school board, about fifteen years ago, most of the men objected, and they decided to hold a town caucus and call the women in. There were a great many reasons why a woman shouldn't leave her home and sit around on a school board, and they felt sure that if they were to talk it over frankly in meeting they could show them these reasons. And, anyway, the chairman would be a man, which would of course take care of the situation.

So a caucus was called, and the Grand Opera House, which holds six hundred human beings, and about a hundred boys in the front seats, was jammed until it bulged. We knew that no woman could out-argue our seasoned old politicians, and when Calvin Briggs, who has planned all the inside work in the congressional district for twenty years, got up and showed just why woman ought not to intrude, there was an abashed silence all over the house, until Emma Madigan, who is a town character and does just as she pleases, got up. She stood up about fifty-nine seconds after Briggs had got a good start, and she argued with him as follows:

"That's all right, Mr. Briggs--You can't make me sit down, Mr. Chairman, you nor any of you politicians--You're a fine man to talk about schools, Mr. Briggs. No, I won't stop. You know a lot about children, don't you, coming up here with tobacco juice all over your shirt front; and why don't you pay some taxes before you get up here and tell how to run a town? All right, Chairman, I'm done."

But so was Briggs. We couldn't help laughing at him. Editor Simpson, who runs the _Argus_, stepped into the breach and regretted greatly that so disgraceful an attack had been made upon a well-beloved citizen by a woman. No man would dare make such an attack, he opined. Then Emma got up again. The chairman called her to order, but he might as well have rapped down the rising tide.

"I know mighty well no man 'ud dare say what I did, Lafe Simpson," she shouted. "'Nd you're the biggest coward of 'em all. If you thought you'd have to lose the school printing, you'd vote for the devil for president of the school board."

Of course it was perfectly disgraceful, but what could we do? Emma was a woman. We couldn't throw her out. We couldn't even get her to listen to parliamentary rules. And the worst of it was, she was telling the truth. That was something no one presumes to tell in local elections. To do it breaks the first commandment of politics; but what do the women, bless 'em, care for our commandments?

The president of the school board at that time was Sanford Jones. He was a large party who panned out about ninety-five per cent. solemnity and the rest water on the brain. At this point in the proceedings he judged it best to rise and turn the subject by telling us why woman should stay at home. He got about two hundred words into circulation before Emma got up. Her scandalized women friends tried to pull her down, and Pelty Amthorne yelled "whoa," but she was in politics to stay.

"You look mighty fine standing up there, Mr. Jones," she shouted, "and tellin' us women to go back home where we belong. But I just want to tell this here crowd to-night that if you wasn't tighter than the bark on a tree, your wife wouldn't have to do her own washing.

"That's why you want her to home. So you can save money."

After that a gloom fell over the meeting, and as no one else seemed to care to speak, people began adjourning on all sides of Emma. After every one else had gone she adjourned. There was no further attempt to hold a caucus that year, and even now when any school faction desires to get together and discuss things, it carefully conceals the news from Miss Madigan.

That was just one of the many little surprises woman has handed to us in Homeburg politics. Since they've gotten interested in school affairs, it beats all how much influence they've got. Take Sadie Askinson for instance. Her husband wanted to run for member of the school board, and Sadie didn't want him to, because he was away from home enough nights anyway, goodness knows. Sim was stubborn, and said the night before election that he was going down and have some ballots printed, anyway, and run. But he didn't, because that night Sadie cut every button off of every garment he had and threw them down into the well. When the kindergarten business came up about ten years ago, old Colonel Ackley hung out against it on the board. Said he wasn't going to stand for wasting the people's money on such foolishness. But he did, because the Young Ladies' Vigilance Society came and wept upon his shoulder. It was organized for that purpose, and after the seventh young lady had soaked up Ackley's coat, he said he'd either vote for kindergarten or leave town, and he didn't care much which.