Chapter VIII: Part 8

Last came the children, that I was going to march with; and someway they were kind of the heart of the whole. And just in front of them was the Mothers' Club--twenty or so of them, hard-worked, hopeful women, all wanting life to be nice for their children, and trying, the best they knew, to read up about it at their meetings. And they were marching that day for the motherhood of the nations, and there wasn't one of them that didn't feel it so. And the children ... when we turned the corner where I could look back on them, I had all I could do--I had all I could do. Three-four hundred of them, bobbing along, carrying any nation's flag that came handy. And they meant so much more than they knew they meant, like children always do.

"You're going to march for the little boys and girls in Europe that have lost their folks," was all we said to them.

And when I see them coming along, looking round so sweet, dressed up in what they had, and their hair combed up nice by somebody, somehow, there came over me the picture of that little fellow with his brick, waiting there for that pint of milk; and I squeezed up so on Bennie's hand that I was walking with, that he looked up at me.

"You're lovin' me too hard in my fingers," he told me, candid.

"Oh, Bennie," I says, "you excuse me. I guess I was squeezing the hand of every little last one of them, over there."

We all came into the Market Square, in the afternoon sunshine, with our little still, peaceful street--laying and listening, and never knowing it was like heaven at all. Every soul in town was there, I don't know of one that didn't go. Even Luke Norris was there, his wind-pipe forgot. We didn't have much exercises. Just being there was exercise enough. We sung--no national airs, and above all, not our own; but just a hymn or two that had in it all we could find of sympathy and love. There wasn't anything else to say, only just those two things. Then Dr. June prayed, brief:

"Lord God of Love, our hearts are full of love this day for all those in Europe who are bereaved. We cannot speak about it very well--we cannot show it very much. But Thou art love to them. Oh, draw us near in spirit to those sorrowing over there, even as Thou are near to them all. Amen."

Then the band played the Chopin funeral march, while we all stood still. When it was done, up in the belfry of the new Town Hall, the new bell that we were so proud of began to toll. And it seemed like the voice of the town, saying something. We all went home to that bell, with the children leading us. And nobody's store was opened again that day. For the spirit of the time, and of Over There, was on the village like a garment, and I suppose none of us spoke of anything else at supper, or when the lamps were lit.

Quite a little while after supper I was sitting on my porch in the dark, when Luke Norris and some of them came in my gate.

"Calliope," said one of the women, "we've been thinking. Don't it seem awful pitiful that Europe can't know how we feel here to-day?"

"I thought of that," I said.

And Luke says: "Well, we've been looking up the cable charges. And we thought we might manage it, to cable something like this:

"Friendship Village memorial exercises held to-day for Europe's
dead. Love and sympathy from our village."

"It'll cost a lot," says Luke. "The McVicars want us to add the money to their relief fund instead. But I say _no_!" he struck the porch post with his palm. "Leave us send it, cost or no cost, no matter what."

"I say so too," I says. "But tell me: Where'll you send it to?"

And Luke says simple:

"None of the newspaper dispatch folks'll take it--it ain't news enough for them. So I'm a-going to cable it myself, prepaid, to six Europe newspapers."

Pretty soon they went away, and I took Bennie and walked down to the gate. I thought about that message, going on the wire to Europe.... There wasn't any moon, or any sound. The town lay still, as if it was thinking. The world lay still, as if it was feeling.

FOOTNOTE:

[10] Copyright, 1916, _Collier's Weekly_, as "Over There."

WHEN THE HERO CAME HOME[11]

Never, not if I live till after my dying day, will I forget the evening that Jeffro got home from the War. It was one of the times when what you thought was the earth under your feet dissolves away, and nothing is left there but a little bit of dirt, with miles of space just on the under side of it. It was one of the times when what you thought was the sky over your head is drawn away like a cloth, and nothing is there but miles of space on the upper side of it. And in between the two great spaces are us little humans, creeping 'round, wondering what we're for. And not doing one-ninth as much wondering as you'd think we would.

Jeffro was the little foreign-born peddler, maker of toys, that had come to Friendship Village and lived for a year with his little boy, scraping enough together to send for his wife and baby in the old country. And no sooner had he got them here than the Big War came--and nothing would do but Jeffro must go back and fight it out with his country. And back he went, though how he got there I dunno, for the whole village loaded him down so with stuff that he must have been part helpless. How a man could fight with his arms part full of raspberry jam and hard cookies and remedies and apple butter, I'm sure I don't know. But the whole village tugged stuff there for days beforehand. Jeffro was our one hero. He was the only soldier Friendship Village had--except old Bud Babcock, with his brass buttons and his limp and his perfectly everlasting, always-coming-on and never-going-off reminiscences. And so, when Jeffro started off, the whole town turned out to watch him go; and when I say that Silas Sykes gave him a store-suit at cost, more no one could say about nothing. For Silas Sykes is noted--that is, he ain't exactly expected--that is to say,--well, to put it real delicate, Silas is as stingy as a dog with one bone. And a store-suit at cost from him was similar to a gold-mine from anybody else. Or more--more.

Well, then, for six months Jeffro was swallowed up. We never heard a word from him. His little wife went around white and thin, and we got so we didn't ask her if she'd heard from him, because we couldn't stand that white, hunted, et-up look on her face. So we kept still, village delicate. And that's a special kind of delicate.

Then, like a bow from the blue, or whatever it is they say, the mayor of the town got the word from New York that Jeffro was coming home with his right arm gone, honorably discharged. And about the same time a letter from Europe, from somebody he knew that had got him the money to come with, told how he'd been shot in a sortie and recommended by the captain for promotion.

"A sortie," says Mis' Postmaster Sykes, thoughtful. "What kind of a battle is a sortie, do you s'pose?"

"Land," says Mis' Amanda Toplady, "ain't that what they call an evening musicale?"

When it heard Jeffro was coming home, Friendship Village rose up like one man. We must give him a welcome. This was part because he was a hero, and part because Mis' Postmaster Sykes thought of it first. And most of Friendship Village don't know what it thinks about anything till she thinks it for them.

"We must welcome him royal,"--were her words. "We must welcome him royal. Ladies, let's us plan."

So she called some of us together to her house one afternoon--Mis' Timothy Toplady, Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, Abigail Arnold, that keeps the Home Bakery, Mis' Photographer Sturgis, that's the village invalid, Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, that her husband's dead, but she keeps his title because we got started calling her that and can't bear to stop--and me. I told her I couldn't do much, being I was training two hundred school children for a Sunday night service that week, and I was pretty busy myself. But I went. And when we all got there, Mis' Sykes took out a piece of paper tore from an account book, and she says, pointing to a list on it with her front finger that wore her cameo ring:

"Ladies! I've got this far, and it's for you to finish. Jeffro will come in on the Through, either Friday or Saturday night. Now we'll have the band"--that's the Friendship Village Stonehenge Band of nine pieces--"and back of that Bud Babcock, a-carrying the flag. We'll take the one off'n the engine house, because that stands so far back no one will miss it. And then we'll have the Boy Scouts, and the Red Barns's ambulance; and we'll put Jeffro in that; and the boys can march beside of him to his home."

"Well-a," says Mis' Timothy Toplady, "what'll you have the ambulance for?"

"Because we've got no other public ve-hicle," says Mis' Sykes, commanding, "without it's the hearse. If so, name what it is."

And nobody naming nothing, she went on:

"Then I thought we'd have the G. A. R., and the W. R. C. from Red Barns--they'll be glad to come over because they ain't so very much happening for them to be patriotic about, without it's Memorial Day. And then the D. A. R. of Friendship Village and Red Barns will come last, each a-carrying a flag in our hands. Friday is April 18th, and we did mean to have a Pink Tea to celebrate Paul Revere's ride. But I'm quite sure the ladies'll all be willing to give that up and transfer their patriotic observation over to Jeffro. And we'll all march down in a body, and be there when the train pulls in. What say, Ladies?"

She leaned back, with a little triumphant pucker, like she'd scraped the world for ideas, and got them all and defied anybody to add to them.

"Well-a," says Mis' Timothy Toplady, "and then what?"

"Then what?" says Mis' Sykes, irritable. "Why, be there. And wave and cheer and flop our flags. And walk along behind him to his house. And hurrah--and sing, mebbe--oh, we _must_ sing, of course!" Mis' Sykes cries, thinking of it for the first time, with her hands clasped.

Mis' Toplady looked troubled.

"Well-a," she says, "what would we sing for?"

"Sing for!" cried Mis' Sykes, exasperated. "Because he's got home, of course."

"With his arm shot off. And his eyes blinded with powder. And him half-starved. And mebbe worse. I dunno, Ladies," says Mis' Toplady, dreamy, "but I'm terrible lacking. But I don't feel like singing over Jeffro."

Mis' Sykes looked at her perfectly withering.

"Ain't you no sense of what'd due to occasions?" says she, regal.

"Yes," says Mis' Toplady, "I have. I guess that's just what's the matter of me. It's the occasion that ails me. I was thinking--well, Ladies, I was wondering just how much like singing we'd feel if we'd _seen_ Jeffro's arm shot off him."

"But we _didn't_ see it," says Mis' Sykes, final. That's the way she argues.

"Mebbe I'm all wrong," says Mis' Toplady, "but, Ladies, I can't feel like a man getting all shot up is an occasion for jollification. I can't do it."

Us ladies all kind of breathed deep, like a vent had been opened.

"Nor me." "Nor me." "Nor me." Run 'round Mis' Sykes's setting-room, from one to one.

I wish't you could have seen Mis' Sykes. She looked like we'd declared for cannibalism and atheism and traitorism, all rolled into one.

"Ain't you ladies," she says, "no sense of the glories of war? Or what?"

"Or what," says Mis' Toplady. "That's just it--glories of what. I guess it's the _what_ part that I sense the strongest, somehow."

Mis' Sykes laid down her paper, and crossed her hands--with the cameo ring under, and then remembered and crossed it _over_--and she says:

"Ladies, facts is facts. You've got to take things as they are."

Abigail Arnold flashed in.

"But you ain't takin' 'em nowheres," she says. "You're leavin' 'em as they are. War is the way it's been for five thousand years--only five thousand times worse."

Mis' Sykes tapped her foot, and made her lips both thin and straight.

"Yes," she says, "and it always will be. As long as the world lasts, there'll be war."

Then I couldn't stand it any longer. I looked her right square in the face, and I says:

"Mis' Sykes. Do you believe that?"

"Certainly I believe it," she says. "Besides, there's nothing in the Bible against war. Not a thing."

"What about 'Thou shalt not kill'?" says I.

She froze me--she fair froze me.

"That," she said, "is an entirely different matter."

"Well," says I, "if you'll excuse me for saying so, it ain't different. But leave that go. What about 'Love thy neighbor'? What about the brotherhood of man? What about--"

She sighed, real patient. "Your mind works so queer sometimes, Calliope," she says.

"Yes, well, mebbe," I says, like I'd said to her before. "But anyhow, it works. It don't just set and set and set, and never hatch nothing. This whole earth has set on war since the beginning, and hatched nothing but death. Do you think, honest, that we haven't no more invention to us than to keep on a-bungling like this to the end of time?"

Mis' Sykes stomped her foot.

"Look-a-here," she says. "Do you want to arrange something to go down to welcome Jeffro home, or don't you? If you don't, say so."

Mis' Toplady sighed.

"Let's us go down to meet him," she says. "Leave us do that. But don't you expect no singing off me," says she, final. "That's all."

So Mis' Sykes, she went ahead with her plan, and she agreed, grudging, to omit out the singing. And the D. A. R's. put off their Paul Revere Tea, and we sent to the City for more flags. Me, though, I didn't take a real part. I agreed to march, and then I didn't take a real part. I'd took on a good deal more than I'd meant to in training the children for the Sunday night thing, and so I shirked Mis' Sykes's party all I could. Not that I wouldn't be glad to see Jeffro. But I couldn't enthuse the way she meant. By Friday, Mis' Sykes had everything pretty ship-shape, and being we still didn't know which day Jeffro would come, we were all to go down to the depot that night, on the chance; and Saturday as well.

Friday afternoon I was working away on some stuff for the children, when Jeffro's wife came in. The poor little thing was so nervous she didn't know whether she was saying "yes" or "no." She'd got herself all ready, in a new-ironed calico, and a red bow at her neck.

"Do you think this bow looks too gay?" she says. "It seems gay, and him so sick. But he always liked me to wear red, and it's all the red I've got. It's only cotton ribbin, too," says she, wistful.

She wanted to know what I was doing, and so's to keep her mind off herself, I told her. The hundred children, from all kinds and denominations and everythings, were to meet together in Shepherd's Grove that Sunday night, and I'd fixed up a little exercise for them: One bunch of them were to represent Science, and they were to carry little models of boats and engines and dirigibles and a little wireless tower. And one bunch was to represent Art, and they were to carry colors and figures and big lovely cardboard designs they made in school. And one bunch was to represent Friendship, and they were to come with garlands and arches that connected them each with all the rest. And one was to represent Plenty, with fruit and grain. And one Beauty, and one Understanding--and so on. And then, in the midst of them, I was going to have a little bit of a child walk, carrying a model of the globe in his hands. And they were all going to come to him, one after another, and they were going to give him what they had. And what we'd planned, with music and singing and a trumpeter and everything, was to be all around that.

"I haven't the right child yet to carry the globe though," I says to Jeffro's wife; "I can't find one little enough that's strong enough to lug the thing."

And then, all of a sudden, I remembered her little boy, and Jeffro's little boy. I remembered Joseph. Awful little he was, but with sturdy legs and arms, and the kind of a face that makes you wonder why all little folks don't look the same way. It seems the only way for them to look.

"Why," I says, "look here: Why can't I borrow Joseph for Sunday night, to carry the globe?"

"You can," she says, "without his father won't be wanting him to leave him, when he's just got home so. Mebbe, though," she says, "he's so sick he won't know whether Joseph is there or not--"

She kind of petered off, like she didn't have strength in her to finish with. She never cried though. That was one thing I noticed about her. She acted like crying is one of the things we ought to have outgrown--like dressing in black for mourning, and like beating a drum on the streets to celebrate anything, and like war. Honest, the way we keep on using old-fashioned styles like these makes me feel sorry for the Way-Things-Were-Meant-To-Be.

So it was arranged that Joseph was to carry the globe. And Jeffro's wife went home to wash out his collar so he could go at all. And I flew round so's to be all ready by six o'clock, when we were to meet at Court House Park and march to the depot to meet Jeffro--so be he come that night.

You know that nice, long, slanting, yellow afternoon light that begins to be left over at six o'clock, in April? When we came along toward Court House Park that night, it looked like that. There was a new fresh green on the grass, and the birds were doing business some, and there was a little nice spring smell in the air, that sort of said "Come on." You know the kind of evening?

We straggled up to the depot, not in regular marching order at all, but just bunched, friendly. Mis' Sykes was walking at the head of her D. A. R. detachment, and she had sewed red and blue to her white duck skirt, and she had a red and blue flower in her hat, and her waist was just redded and blued, from shoulder to shoulder, with badges and bows. Mis' Sykes was awful patriotic as to colors, but I didn't blame her. She'd worn mourning so much, her only chance to wear the becoming shades at all was by putting on her country's colors. Honest, I don't s'pose she thought of that, though--well, I mean--I don't s'pose she really thought--well, let's us go ahead with what I was trying to tell.

While we were waiting at the depot, all disposed around graceful on trucks and trunks, the Friendship Village Stonehenge band started in playing, just to get its hand in. And it played "The Star Spangled Banner." And as soon as ever it started in, up hopped Silas Sykes onto his feet, so sudden it must have snapped his neck. Mis' Amanda Toplady, that was sitting by me on the telegraph window sill, she looked at him a minute without moving. And then she says to me, low:

"Whenever a man gets up so _awful_ sudden when one of his country's airs is played, I always think," she says, "I'd just love to look into his business life, and make perfectly sure that he ain't a-making his money in ways that ain't patriotic to his country, nor a credit to his citizenship--in the real sense."

"Me, too," I says, fervent.

And then we both got to our feet deliberate, Silas having glared at us and all but beckoned to us with his neck. He was singing the song, too--negligent, in his throat. And while he did so, I knew Mis' Toplady and I were both thinking how Silas, a while ago, had done the town out of twice the worth of the property we'd bought from him, for a Humane Society home. And that we'd be paying him for ten years to come. I couldn't help thinking of it. I'm thinking of it now.

Before they were done playing the piece, the train whistled. We lined up, or banked up, or whatever you want to call it. And there we stood when the train slowed and stopped. And not a soul got off.

No; Jeffro wasn't on that train. He didn't come that night at all. And when the next night we all got down there to meet the Through again, in the same grand style, the identical same thing happened. He didn't come that night, either. And we trailed back from the train, with our spirits dampened a little. Because now he couldn't come till Monday night, being the Through only run to the city on Sundays and didn't come out to Friendship Village at all.

So I had that evening to put my mind on the children, and finish up what I had to do for them. And I was glad. Because the service that I was planning for that night grew on me. It was a Spring festival, a religious festival--because I always think that the coming of Spring is a religious ceremony, really--in the best sense. It's when the new birth begins to come all over the earth at once, gentle, as if somebody was thinking it out, a little at a time. And as if it was hoping and longing for us to have a new life, too.

And yet I was surprised that they'd leave me have the festival on Sunday. We've got so used to thinking of religion--and one or two brands of patriotism--as the only holy things there are. I didn't know but when I mentioned having Science and Art and Friendship and Beauty and Plenty and Understanding and Peace at my Sunday evening service, they might think I was over-stepping some. I don't know but they did, too. Only they indulged me a little.

So everybody came. The churches had all agreed to unite, being everybody's children were in the festival. And by five o'clock that Sunday afternoon the whole of Shepherd's Grove was full of Friendship Village folks, come from all over the town and out on the edges, and in the country, to see the children have their vesper festival. That's what I'd called it--a vesper festival, so it'd help them that had their doubts.

There weren't any seats, for it wasn't going to be long, and I had them all stand in a pleasant green spot in the grove, on two sides of the little grass-grown road that wound through the wood, and down which, pretty soon, I was going to have Joseph come, carrying the globe of the world.

When we were ready, and the little trumpeter we'd got had stilled them all with the notes he'd made, that were like somebody saying something and really meaning it--the way a trumpet does--then the children began to sing, soft and all together, from behind a thicket of green that they'd made themselves:

"Don't you wish we had a place
Where only bright things are,
Like the things we dream about,
And like a star?

"Don't you wish the world would turn
For an hour or two,
And run back the other way
And be made new?

"Don't you wish we all could be
What we know we are,
'Way inside, where a Voice speaks,
Far--and near--and far?"

And then they came out--one after another of the groups I've told you about--Science, and Art, and Friendship, and Plenty, and the others. And each one said what they knew how to do to the world to make that wish come true. I don't need to tell you about that. You know. If you have friendship or plenty or beauty in your life, you know. If only we could get enough of them!

Out they all came, one after another. It was very still in the wood. The children's voices were sweet and clear. They all had somebody there that they were near and dear to. The whole time was quiet, and close up to, and like the way things were meant to be. And like the way things might be. And like the way things will be--when we let them.

Then there was a little pause. For they'd all told what might be, and now it was time to signal Joseph to come running up the road, carrying the globe in its orbit, and speaking for the World, and asking all these lovely things to come and take possession of it, and own it, and be it. But, just as I got ready to motion to him, I had to wait, for down the grassy road through Shepherd's Grove, where there wasn't much travel, was coming an automobile, though one doesn't pass that way from the city once in ten years.

We all drew back to let it pass among us. And, in that little pause, we looked, curious, to see who was in it. And then a whisper, and then a cry, came from the nearest, and from them back, and then from them all at once. For, propped up on the seat, was Jeffro. He'd come to the city on the Through, that doesn't come to Friendship Village Sundays, and they'd brought him home this way.

I dunno how I thought of it--don't it seem as if something in you works along alone, if only you'll keep your thinking still? It did that now. Almost before I knew I was going to do it, I signed to the man to stop, and I stepped right up beside the car where Jeffro sat, looking like a ghost of a man. And I says:

"Mr. Jeffro! Mr. Jeffro! Are you too sick to leave us welcome you home?"

He smiled then, and put out his hand--the one hand that he'd come back with. And from somewhere in the crowd, Jeffro's wife got to the car, and got the door open, and leaned there beside him. And we all waited a minute--but one minute was the very best we could do. Then everybody came pressing up round the car to shake his hand. And I slipped back to the bugler we had, and I says:

"Blow! Blow the loudest you ever blew in your life. _Blow!_"

He blew a blast, silver clear, golden clear, sunlight clear. And I sent him through the crowd, blowing, and making a path right up to the automobile. Then I signed to the children, and I had them come down that open aisle. And they came singing, all together, the song they had sung behind the thicket. And they pressed close around the car, singing still:

"Don't you wish we had a place
Where only bright things are,
Like the things we dream about,
And like a star?"

And there they came to meet him--Art and Science and Plenty and Beauty and Friendship--Friendship. I don't know whether he understood what they said. I don't know whether he understood the meaning of what they carried--for Jeffro wasn't quite sure of our language all the time. But, oh, he couldn't misunderstand the spirit of that time or of those folks.

He got to his feet, Jeffro did, his face kind of still and solemn. And just then Mis' Silas Sykes, in a black dress, without a scrap of red or blue about her, stepped up to him, her face fair grief-struck. And she says:

"Oh, Mr. Jeffro. The D. A. R., and the G. A. R., and the W. R. C. was to welcome you back from the glories of war. And here you've took us unbeknownst."

He looked round at us--and this is what I'll never forget--not if I live till my dying day:

"The glories of war!" he says over. "The glories of war! You do not know what you say! I tell you that I have seen mad dogs, mad beasts of prey--but I do not know what it is they do. The glories of war! Oh, my God, does nobody know that we are all mad together?"

Jeffro's wife tried to quiet him, but he shook her off.

"Listen," he said. "I have gone to war and lived through hell to learn one thing. I gif it to you: _Life is something else than what we think it is._ That is true. _Life is something else than what we think it is._ When we find it out, we shall stop this devil's madness."

Just then a little cry came from somewhere over back in the road.

"My papa! It _is_ my papa!" it said. And there came running Joseph, that had heard his father's voice, and that we had forgot' all about. We let him through the crowd, and he climbed up in the car, and his father took him in his one arm. And there they sat, with the globe that Joseph carried, the world that he carried, in beside them.

We all began moving back to the village, before much of anybody knew it--the automobile with Jeffro in it, and Jeffro's wife, and Jeffro's little boy. And with the car went, not soldiers, not flags, not the singing of any one nation's airs--but the children, with those symbols of the life that is living and building life--as fast as we'll let it build. Jeffro didn't know what they were, I guess--though he knew the love and the kindliness and the peace of the time. But I knew, and more of us knew, that in that hour lay all the promise of the new day, when we understand what we are: Gods, fallen into a pit.

We went up the street with the children singing:

"Don't you wish we all could be
What we know we are,
'Way inside, where a Voice speaks,
Far--and near--and far?"

When we got to Jeffro's gate, Mis' Sykes came past me.

"Ain't it sad?" she says. "Not a soldier, nor a patriotic song, nor a flag to meet our hero?"

I looked at her, kind. I felt kind to all the world, because somehow I felt so sure, so certain sure, of things.

"Don't you worry, Mis' Sykes," I says. "I kind of feel as if more was here to meet Jeffro than we've any notion of."

For it was one of the times when what you thought was the earth under your feet dissolves away, and nothing is left there but a little bit of dirt, with miles of space just on the under side of it. It was one of the times when what you thought was the sky over your head is drawn away like a cloth, and nothing is there but miles of space high on the upper side of it. And in between these two great spaces are us little humans, kind of creeping round--wondering what we're for.

FOOTNOTE:

[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."

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 cushions of woods dropped around, and wreaths of smoke curling up from contented chimneys. And over on the South slope our big new brick county house, with thick lips and lots of arched eye-brows, the house that us ladies was getting seats to put in the yard of.

"Say what who will," thinks I, "I love that little town. And I guess it's just about as good as any of us could expect."

I got to the City just before the Convention's evening meeting. I brushed my hair up, and put on my cameo pin, and hurried right over to the hall. And when I showed them my card, where do you guess they took me? Up to one of the rows on the stage. Me, that had never faced an audience except with my back to them--as organist in our church. (That sounds so grand that I'd ought to explain that I can't play anything except what's wrote natural. So I'm just organist to morning service, when I can pick out my own hymns, and not for prayer meeting when anybody is likely to pipe up and give out a song just black with sharps and flats.) There were a hundred or more on the stage, and there were flowers and palms and lights and colors. I sat there looking at the pattern of the boards of the stage, and just about half sensing what was going on at first. Then I got my eyes up a little ways to some pots of blue hydrangeas on the edge of the stage. I had a blue hydrangea in my yard home, so they kind of gave me courage. Then my eye slipped over the foot-lights, to the first rows, to the back rows, to the boxes, to the galleries--over the length and breadth of that world of folks--thousands of them--as many as five times them in my whole village. And they were gathered in a room the size and the shape and--almost the height of a village green.

The woman that was going to talk that night I'd never even heard of. She was a woman that you wouldn't think of just as a woman or a wife or a mother or a teacher same as some. No, you thought of her first of all as folks. And she had eyes like the living room, with all the curtains up. She'd been talking a little bit before I could get my mind off the folks and on to her. But all of a sudden something she was saying rang out just like she had turned and said it to me. I cut it out of the paper afterwards--this is it, word for word:

"_You who believe yourselves to be interested in social work, ask yourselves what it is that you are interested in really. I will tell you. Well, whether you know it or not, fundamentally what you care about is_ PEOPLE. _Let us say it in a better way. It is_ FOLKS."

I never took my eyes off her face after that. For "folks" is a word I know. Better than any other word in the language, I know that word "folks."

She said: "Well, let us see what, in clubs, our social work has been: At first, Clean-up days, Planting, Children's Gardens, School Gardens, Bill Boards, the Smoke Nuisance. That is fine, all of it. These are what we must do to make our towns fit to live in.

"Then more and more came the need to get nearer to folks--and yet nearer. And then what did we have? Fly campaigns, Garbage Disposal, Milk and Food Inspection, Playgrounds, Vocational Guidance, Civic and Moral training in the schools, Sex Hygiene, Municipal Recreation, Housing. All this has brought us closer and closer to folks--not only to their needs but to what they have to give. That is fine--all of it. That is what we have to do.

"But who is it that has been doing it? Those of us to whom life has been a little kind. Those of us on whom the anguish and the toil of life do not fall the most heavily. We are free to do these things. Clean, cleanly clothed, having won--or been given--a little leisure, we are free to meet together and to turn our thought to the appearance of our cities--and to the other things. That is a great step. We have come very far, my friends.

"But is it far enough?

"Here in this hall with us to-night there are others besides ourselves. Each of us from near towns and far cities comes shepherding a cloud of witnesses. Who are these? Say those others, clean and leisured, who live in your town, and yours. Say the school children, that vast, ambiguous host, from your town and yours and yours. Say the laboring children--five hundred thousand of them in the states which you in this room represent--my friends, the _laboring children_. Say, the seven million and more women workers in your states and mine. Say the men,--the wage earners,--toilers with the hands, multitudes, multitudes, who on the earth and beneath it, in your town and yours and yours, are at labor now, that we may be here--clean and at leisure. I tell you they are all here, sitting with us, shadowy. And the immediate concerns of these are the immediate concerns of us. And social work is the development of the chance for all of us to participate more abundantly in our common need to live.

"As fast as in you lies, let your civic societies look farther than conserving or planting or beautifying, or even cleaning. Give these things to committees--important committees. And turn you to the fundamentals. Turn to the industries and to the government and to the schools of your towns and there work, for there lie the hidings of your power. Here are the great tasks of the time: The securing of economic justice for labor, the liberation of women, and the great deliverances: From war, from race prejudice, from prostitution, from alcohol, and at last from poverty.

"These are the things _we_ have to do. Not they. We. You and I. These are your tasks and mine and the tasks of those who have not our cleanliness nor our leisure, but who will help as fast as ever we learn how to share that help--as fast as ever we all learn how to work as one.... Oh, my friends, we must dream far. We must dream the farthest that folks can go. For life is something other than that which we believe it to be."

When she'd got through, right in the middle of the power and the glory that came in my head, something else flew up and it was:

1. See about having seats put in the County House Yard.

2. See about getting the blankets in the Calaboose washed oftener.

3. See about--and all the rest of them.

And instead, _this_ was what we were for, till all of us have earned the right to something better. This was what we could help to do. It was like the sky had turned into a skylight, and let me look up through....

My seat was on the side corner of the platform, nearest to her. She had spoken last, and everybody was rustling to go. I didn't wait a minute. I went down close beside the footlights and the blue hydrangeas, and held out my letter. And I says:

"Oh! Come to Friendship Village. You must come. We were going to get the blankets in the calaboose washed oftener--and--we--oh, you come, and make us see that life is the kind of thing you say it is, and show us that we belong!"

She took the letter that Mis' Fire Chief Merriman had composed for me, and right while forty folks were waiting for her, she stood and read it. She had a wonderful kind of tender smile, and she smiled with that. And then all she says to me was all I wanted:

"I'll come. When do you want me?"

Never, not if I live till after my dying day, will I forget the day that I got back to Friendship Village. When it came in sight through the car window, I saw it--not sitting down on its green cushions now, but standing tip-toe on its heaven-kissing hills--waiting to see what we could do to it. When you come home from a big convention like that, if you don't step your foot on your own depot platform with a new sense of consecration to your town, and to all living things, then you didn't deserve your badge, nor your seat, nor your privilege. And as I rode into the town, thinking this, and thinking more than I had words to think with, I wanted to chant a chant, like Deborah (but pronounced Déborah when it's a relative). And I wanted to say:

"Oh, Lord. Here we live in a town five thousand strong, and we been acting like we were five thousand weak--and we never knew it.

"And because we had learned to sweep up a few feet beyond our own door-yard, and had found out the names of a few things we had never heard of before, we thought we were civic. We even thought we were social.

"Civic. Social. We thought these were new names for new things. And here they are only bringing in the kingdom of God, that we've known about all along.

"Oh, it isn't going to be brought in by women working along alone. Nor by men working along alone. It's going to come in by whole towns rising up together men and women, shoulder to shoulder, and nobody left out, organized and conscious and working like one folk. Like one folk."

Mis' Amanda Toplady and Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss were at the depot to meet me. I remember how they looked, coming down the platform, with an orange and lemon and water-melon sunset idling down the sky.

And then Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss says to me, with her eye-brows all pleased and happy:

"Oh, Calliope, we've got the new seats for the County House Yard. They're iron, painted green, with a leaf design on the back."

"And," chimes in the other one, "we've got them to say they'll wash the blankets in the calaboose every quarter."

I wanted to begin right then. But I didn't. I just walked down the street with them, a-carrying my bag and my umbrella, and when one of them says, "Well, I'm sure your dress don't look so very much wore after all, Calliope," I answered back, casual enough, just as if I was thinking about what she said: "Well, I give you my word, I haven't once thought about myself in con-nection with that dress."

Together we went down Daphne Street in the afternoon sun. And they didn't know, nor Friendship Village didn't know, that walking right along with us three was the tramp and the tramp of the feet of a great convention that had come home with me, right there to our village. Oh, I mean the tramp and the tramp of the feet of the folks in the whole world.

FOOTNOTE:

[12] Copyright, 1914, _La Follette's Magazine_.

THE END

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End of Project Gutenberg's Peace in Friendship Village, by Zona Gale