"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.