Part 7

"Well, and then we'd done an innovation--an' this was all Insley's idea, and it was him that made us believe we could do it. Coming next, in carriages and on foot, was the mayor and the city council and every last man or woman that had anything to do with running the city life. They was all there--city treasurer, clerk of the court, register of deeds, sheriffs, marshals, night-watchmen, health officer, postmaster, janitor of the city hall, clerks, secretaries, stenographers, school board, city teachers, and every one of the rest--they was all there, just like they had belonged in the p'rade the way them framers of the first Fourth of July had meant they should fit in: Conscience and all. But some of them servants of the town had made money off'n its good roads, and some off'n its saloons, and some off'n getting ordinances repealed, and some off'n inspecting buildings and sidewalks that they didn't know nothing about, and some was making it even then by paving out into the marsh; and some in yet other ways that wasn't either real elbow work nor clean head work. What else could they do? We'd ask' them to march because they represented the town, and rather'n own they _didn't_ represent the town, there they was marching; but if some of them didn't step down Daphne Street feeling green and sick and sore and right down schoolboy ashamed of themselves, then they ain't got the human thrill in them that somehow I _cannot_ believe ever dies clear out of nobody. They was a lump in my throat for them that had sold themselves, and they was a lump for them that hadn't--but oh, the differ'nce in the lumps.

"'Land, land,' I says to Mis' Toplady, 'if we ain't done another thing, we've made 'em remember they're servants to Friendship Village--like they often forget.'

"'Ain't we?' she says, solemn. 'Ain't we?'

"And then next behind begun the farm things: the threshin' machines and reapers and binders and mowers and like that, all drawn by the farm horses and drove by their owners and decorated by them, jolly and gay; and, too, all the farm horses for miles around--we was going to give a donated surprise prize for the best kep' and fed amongst them. And last, except for the other two bands sprinkled along, come the leading citizens, and who do you guess _they_ was? Not Silas nor Timothy nor Eppleby nor even Doctor June, nor our other leading business men and our three or four professionals--no, not them; but the real, true, leading citizens of Friendship Village and Indian Mound and Red Barns and other towns and the farms between--the _children_, over two hundred of them, dressed in white if they had it and in dark if they didn't, with or without shoes, in rags or out of them, village-tough descended or with pew-renting fathers, all the same and together, and carrying a flag and singing to the tops of their voices 'Hail, Columbia,' that the bands kept a-playing, some out of plumb as to time, but all fervent and joyous. It was us women alone that got up that part. My, I like to think about it.

"They swung the length of Daphne Street and twice around the market square, and they come to a halt in front of the platform. And Doctor June stood up before them all, and he prayed like this:--

"'Lord God, that let us start free an' think we was equal, give us to help one another to be free an' to get equal, in deed an' in truth.'

"And who do you s'pose we hed to read the Declaration of Independence? Little Spudge Cadoza, that Silas had been a-going to hev walk up and down Daphne Street with a board on his back--Insley thought of him, and we picked him out a-purpose. And though he didn't read it so thrilling as Silas would of, it made me feel the way no reading of it has ever made me feel before--oh, because it was kind of like we'd snapped up the little kid and set him free all over again, even though he wasn't it but one day in the year. And it sort of seemed to me that all inside the words he read was trumpets and horns telling how much them words was _going_ to mean to him and his kind before he'd had time to die. And then the Glee Club struck into 'America,' and the whole crowd joined in without being expected, and the three bands that was laying over in the shade hopped up and struck in, too--and I bet they could of heard us to Indian Mound. Leastways to Red Barns, that we can see from Friendship Village when it's clear.

"The grand basket dinner in the Depot Woods stays in my head as one picture, all full of veal loaf and 'scalloped potato and fruit salad and nut-bread and deviled eggs and bake' beans and pickle' peaches and layer cake and drop sponge-cake and hot coffee--the kind of a dinner that comes crowding to your thought whenever you think 'Dinner' at your hungriest. And after we'd took care of everybody's baskets and set them under a tree for a lunch towards six, us ladies went back to the market square. And over by the marquee we see the men gathered--all but Insley, that had slipped away as quick as we begun telling him how much of it was due to him. Miss Beryl Sessions had just arrived, in a automobile, covered with veils, and she was introducing the other men to her City friends. Us ladies sort of kittered around back of them, not wanting to press ourselves forward none, and we went up to the door of the marquee where, behind the refreshment table, Mis' Sykes was a-standing in her white duck.

"'My,' says Mis' Holcomb to her, 'it's all going off nice so far, ain't it?'

"'They ain't a great deal the matter with it,' says Mis' Sykes, snappy.

"'Why, Mis' Sykes,' says Mis' Uppers, grieving, 'the parade an' the basket dinner seemed to me both just perfect.'

"'The parade done well enough,' says Mis' Sykes, not looking at her. 'I donno much about the dinner.'

"And all of a sudden we recollected that she hadn't been over to the grand basket dinner at all.

"'Why, Mis' Sykes,' says Mis' Toplady, blank, 'ain't you et nothin'?'

"'My niece,' says Mis' Sykes, dignified, 'didn't get here till now. Who was I to leave in the _tent_? I've et,' says she, cold, 'two dishes of ice-cream an' two chocolate nut-cakes.'

"Mis' Toplady just swoops over towards her. 'Why, my land,' she says, hearty, 'they's stuff an' to spare packed over there under the trees. You go right on over and get your dinner. Poke right into any of our baskets--ours is grouped around mine that's tied with a red bandanna to the handle. And leave us tend the marquee. What say, ladies?'

"And I don't think she even sensed she used that name.

"When she'd gone, I stood a minute in the marquee door looking off acrost the market square, hearing Miss Beryl Sessions and the men congratulating each other on the glorious Fourth they was a-having, and the City folks praising them both sky high.

"'Real nice idee it was,' says Silas, with his hands under his best coat tails. 'Nice, tastey, up-to-date Fourth. And cheap to do.'

"'Yes, we all hung out for a good Fourth this year,' says Timothy, complacent.

"'It's a simply lovely idea,' says Miss Beryl Sessions, all sweet and chirpy and interested, 'this making the Fourth a county party and getting everybody in town, so. But tell me: Whatever made you close your shops? I thought the Fourth could always be made to pay for itself over and over, if the business houses went about it right.'

"'Oh, well,' says Silas, lame but genial, 'we closed up to-day. We kind o' thought we would.'

"But I stood looking off acrost the market square, where the children was playing, and quoits was being pitched, and the ball game was going to commence, and the calathumpians was capering, and most of Red Barns and Indian Mound and Friendship Village was mingling, lion and lamb; and I looked on along Daphne Street, where little Spudge Cadoza wasn't walking with a Prize Coffee board on his back,--and all of a sudden I felt just the way I'd wanted to feel, in spite of all the distance and long-ago-ness. And I turned and says to the other women inside the marquee:--

"'Seems to me,' I says, 'as if the Fourth of July _had_ paid for itself, over and over. Oh, don't it to you?'

VI

"The new editor of the _Friendship Village Evening Daily_ give a fine write-up of the celebration. He printed it on the night after the Fourth, not getting out any paper at all on the day that was the day; but on the night after that, the news columns of his paper fell flat and dead. In a village the day following a holiday is like the hush after a noise. The whole town seems like it was either asleep or on tiptoe. And in Friendship Village this hush was worse than the hush of other years. Other years they'd usually been accidents to keep track of, and mebbe even an amputation or two to report. But this Fourth there was no misfortunes whatever, nor nothing to make good reading for the night of July 6.

"So the editor thought over his friends and run right down the news column, telling what there _wasn't_. Like this:--

"'SUPPER TABLE JOTTINGS

"'Postmaster Silas Sykes is well.

"'Timothy Toplady has not had a cold since before Christmas. Prudent Timothy.

"'Jimmy Sturgis has not broken his leg yet this year as he did last. Keep it up, Jimmy.

"'Eppleby Holcomb has not been out of town for quite a while.

"'None of the Friendship ladies has given a party all season.

"'The First Church is not burnt down nor damaged nor repaired. Insurance $750.

"'Nothing local is in much of any trouble.

"'Nobody is dead here to-day except the usual ones.

"'Nobody that's got a telephone in has any company at the present writing. Where is the old-time hospitality?

"'Subscriptions payable in advance.

"'Subscriptions payable in advance.

"'Subscriptions payable in advance.'

"It made quite some fun for us, two or three of us happening in the post-office store when the paper come out--Mis' Sykes and Mis' Toplady and me. But we took it some to heart, too, because to live in a town where they ain't nothing active happening all the time is a kind of running account of everybody that's in the town. And us ladies wan't that kind.

"All them locals done to Silas Sykes, though, was to set him fussing over nothing ever happening to him. Silas is real particular about his life, and I guess he gets to thinking how life ain't so over-particular about him.

"'My dum,' he says that night, 'that's just the way with this town. I always calculated my life was goin' to be quite some pleasure to me. But I don't see as it is. If I thought I was going to get sold in my death like I've been in my life, I swan I'd lose my interest in dyin'.'

"Mis' Timothy Toplady was over in behind the counter picking out her butter, and she whirled around from sampling the jars, and she says to Mis' Sykes and me:--

"'Ladies,' she says, 'le's us propose it to the editor that seems to have such a hard job, that us members of Sodality take a hold of his paper for a day and get it out for him and put some news in it, and sell it to everybody, subscribers and all, that one night, for ten cents.'

"Mis' Silas Sykes looks up and stopped winking and breathing, in a way she has when she sights some distant money for Sodality.

"'Land, land,' she says, 'I bet they'd go like hot cakes.'

"But Silas he snorts, scorching.

"'Will you ladies tell me,' he says, 'where you going to _get_ your news to put in your paper? The Fourth don't come along every day. Or less you commit murder and arson and runaways, there won't be any more in your paper than they is in its editor's.'

"That hit a tender town-point, and I couldn't stand it no longer. I spoke right up.

"'Oh, I donno, I donno, Silas,' I says. 'They's those in this town that's doin' the murderin' for us, neat an' nice, right along,' I told him.

"'Mean to say?' snapped Silas.

"'Mean to say,' says I, 'most every grocery store in this town an' most every milkman an' the meat market as well is doin' their best to drag the health out o' people's systems for 'em. Us ladies is more or less well read an' knowledgeable of what is goin' on in the world outside,' I says to Silas that ain't, 'an' we know a thing or two about what ought to be clean.'

"Since Insley come, we had talked a good deal more about these things and what was and what shouldn't be; and especially we had talked it in Sodality, on account of our town stores and social ways and such being so inviting to disease and death. But we hadn't talked it official, 'count of Sodality being for Cemetery use, and talking it scattering we hadn't been able to make the other men even listen to us.

"'Pack o' women!' says Silas, now, and went off to find black molasses for somebody.

"Mis' Toplady sampled her butter, dreamy.

"'Rob Henny's butter here,' she says, 'is made out of cow sheds that I can't bear to think about. An' Silas knows it. Honest,' she says, 'I'm gettin' so I spleen against the flowers in the fields for fear Rob Henny's cows'll get holt of 'em. I should think the _Daily_ could write about that.'

"I remember how us three women looked at each other then, like our brains was experimenting with our ideas. And when Mis' Toplady got her butter, we slipped out and spoke together for a few minutes up past the Town Pump. And it was there the plan come to a head and legs and arms. And we see that we had a way of picking purses right off of every day, so be the editor would leave us go ahead--and of doing other things.

"The very next morning we three went to see the editor and get his consent.

"'What's your circulation, same as City papers print to the top of the page?' Mis' Toplady asks him, practical.

"'Paid circulation or got-out circulation?' says the editor.

"'Paid,' says Mis' Toplady, in silver-dollar tones.

"'Ah, well, _paid for_ or subscribed for?' asks the editor.

"'Paid for,' says Mis' Toplady, still more financial.

"'Six hundred and eighty paid for,' the editor says, 'an' fifty-two that--mean to pay.'

"'My!' says Mis' Toplady, shuddering. 'What business is! Well, us ladies of the Sodality want to run your paper for one day and charge all your subscribers ten cents extra for that day's paper. Will you?'

"The editor, he laughed quite a little, and then he looked thoughtful. He was new and from the City and young and real nervous--he used to pop onto his feet whenever a woman so much as come in the room.

"'Who would collect the ten cents?' says he.

"'Sodality,' says Mis' Toplady, firm. 'Ourself, cash an' _in advance_.'

"The editor nodded, still smiling.

"'Jove,' he said, 'this fits in remarkably well with the fishing I've been thinking about. I confess I need a day. I suppose you wouldn't want to do it this week?'

"Mis' Toplady looked at me with her eyebrows. But I nodded. I always rather hurry up than not.

"'So be we had a couple o' hours to get the news to happenin',' says she, 'that had ought to do us.'

"The editor looked startled.

"'News!' said he. 'Oh, I say now, you mustn't expect too much. I ought to warn you that running a paper in this town is like trying to raise cream on a cistern.'

"Mis' Toplady smiled at him motherly.

"'You ain't ever tried pouring the cream into the cistern, I guess,' she says.

"So we settled it into a bargain, except that, after we had planned it all out with him and just as we was going out the door, Mis' Toplady thought to say to him:--

"'You know, Sodality don't know anything about it yet, so you'd best not mention it out around till this afternoon when we vote to do it. We'll be up at eight o'clock Thursday morning, rain or shine.'

"There wasn't ever any doubt about Sodality when it see Sixty Dollars ahead--which we would get if everybody bought a paper, and we was determined that everybody should buy. Sodality members scraps among themselves personal, but when it comes to raising money we unite yoke to yoke, and all differences forgot. It's funny sometimes at the meetings, funny and disgraceful, to hear how we object to each other, especially when we're tired, and then how we all unite together on something for the good of the town. I tell you, it makes me feel sometimes that the way ain't so much to try to love each other,--which other folks' peculiarities is awful in the way of,--but for us all to pitch in and love something altogether, your town or your young folks, or your cemetery or keeping something clean or making somethin' look nice--and before you know it you're loving the folks you work with, no matter how peculiar, or even more so. It's been so nice since we've been working for Cemetery. Folks that make each other mad every time they try to talk can sell side by side at the same bazaar and count the money mutual. There's quite a few disagreements in Sodality, so we have to be real careful who sets next to who to church suppers. But when we pitch in to work for something, we sew rags and 'scallop oysters in the same pan with our enemies. Don't it seem as if that must mean something? Something big?

"Sodality voted to publish the paper, all right, and elected the officers for the day: Editor, Mis' Postmaster Sykes, 'count of her always expecting to take the lead in everything; assistant editor, me, 'count of being well and able to work like a dog; business manager and circulation man, Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, 'count of no dime ever getting away from her unexpected. And the reporters was to be most of the rest of the Sodality: Mis' Timothy Toplady, the three Liberty girls, Mis' Mayor Uppers, Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, Mis' Threat Hubbelthwait, an' Abagail Arnold, that keeps the home bakery. It was hard for Abagail to get away from her cook stove and her counter, so we fixed it that she was to be let off any other literary work along of her furnishing us our sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs that day noon. It was quite a little for Abagail to do, but she's always real willing, and we didn't ask coffee of her. Mis' Sturgis, her that is the village invalid, we arranged should have charge of the Woman's Column, and bring down her rocking chair and make her beef broth right there on the office wood-stove.

"I guess we was all glad to go down early in the morning that day, 'count of not meeting the men. One and all and with one voice the Friendship men had railed at us hearty.

"'Pack o' women!' says Silas Sykes, over and over.

"'You act like bein' a woman an' a wife was some kind o' nonsense,' says Mis' Sykes back at him, majestic. 'Well, I guess bein' yours is.'

"'Land, Amandy,' says Timothy Toplady, 'you women earn money so _nervous_. Why don't you do it regular an' manly?'

"Only Eppleby Holcomb had kept his silence. Eppleby sees things that the run of men don't see, or, if they did see them, they would be bound to stick them in their ledgers where they would never, never belong. Eppleby was our friend, and Sodality never had truer.

"So though we went ahead, the men had made us real anxious. And most of us slipped down to the office by half past seven so's not to meet too many. The editor had had a column in the paper about what we was goin' to do--'Loyal to our Local Dead' he headed it, and of course full half the town was kicking at the extra ten cents, like full half of any town can and will kick when it's asked to pay out for its own good, dead or alive. But we was leaving all that to Mis' Holcomb, that knows a thing or two about the human in us, and similar.

"Extra-paper morning, when we all come in, Mis' Sykes she was sitting at the editor's desk with her big apron on and a green shade to cover up her crimping kids, and her list that her and Mis' Toplady and I had made out, in front of her.

"'Now then, let's get right to work,' she says brisk. 'We ain't any too much time, I can tell you. It ain't like bakin' bread or gettin' the vegetables ready. We've all got to use muscles this day we ain't used to usin',' she says, 'an' we'd best be spry.'

"So then she begun giving out who was to do what--assignments, the editor named it when he told us what to do. And I skipped back an' hung over the files, well knowing what was to come.

"Mis' Sykes stood up in her most society way, an'--

"'Anybody want to back out?' says she, gracious.

"'Land!' says everyone in a No-I-don't tone.

"'Very well,' says Mis' Sykes. 'Mis' Toplady, you go out to Rob Henney's place, an' you go through his cow sheds from one end to the other an' take down notes so's he sees you doin' it. You go into his kitchen an' don't you let a can get by you. Open his churn. Rub your finger round the inside of his pans. An' if he won't tell you, the neighbours will. Explain to him you're goin' to give him a nice, full printed description in to-night's _Daily_, just the way things are. If he wants it changed any, he can clean all up, an' we'll write up the clean-up like a compliment.'

"Just for one second them assembled women was dumb. But it hardly took them that instant to sense what was what. And all of a sudden, Mame Holcomb, I guess it was, bursted out in a little understanding giggle, and after a minute everybody joined in, too. For we'd got the whole world of Friendship Village where we wanted it, and every one of them women see we had, so be we wasn't scared.

"'Mis' Uppers,' Mis' Sykes was going on, 'you go down to Betts's meat market. You poke right through into the back room. An' you tell Joe Betts that you're goin' to do a write-up of that room an' the alley back of it for the paper to-night, showin' just what's what. If so be he wants to turn in an' red it up this mornin', tell him you'll wait till noon an' describe it then, _providin'_ he keeps it that way. An' you might let him know you're goin' to run over to his slaughterhouse an' look around while you're waitin', an' put that in your write-up, too.'

"'Miss Hubbelthwait,' Mis' Sykes went on, 'you go over to the Calaboose. They won't anybody be in the office--Dick's saloon is that. Skip right through in the back part, an' turn down the blankets on both beds an' give a thorough look. If it's true they's no sheets an' pillow-cases on the calaboose beds, an' that the blankets is only washed three times a year so's to save launderin', we can make a real interestin' column about that.'

"'Miss Merriman,' says Mis' Sykes to Mis' Fire Chief, 'I've give you a real hard thing because you do things so delicate. Will you take a walk along the residence part of town an' go into every house an' ask 'em to let you see their back door an' their garbage pail. Tell 'em you're goin' to write a couple of columns on how folks manage this. Ask 'em their idees on the best way. Give 'em to understand if there's a real good way they're thinkin' of tryin' that you'll put that in, providin' they begin tryin' right off. An' tell 'em they can get it carted off for ten cents a week if enough go in on it. An' be your most delicate, Mis' Fire Chief, for we don't want to offend a soul.'

"Libby an' Viney Liberty Mis' Sykes sent round to take a straw vote in every business house in town to see how much they'd give towards starting a shelf library in the corner of the post-office store, a full list to be printed in order with the amount or else 'Not a cent' after each name. And the rest of Sodality she give urrants similar or even more so.

"'An' all o' you,' says Mis' Sykes, 'pick up what you can on the way. And if anybody starts in to object, you tell 'em you have instructions to make an interview out of any of the interestin' things they say. And you might tell 'em you don't want they should be buried in a nice cemetery if they don't want to be.'

"Well, sir, they started off--some scairt, but some real brave, too. And the way they went, we see every one of them meant business.

"'But oh,' says Mis' Sturgis, fixing her medicine bottles outside on the window-sill, '_supposin'_ they can't do it. _Supposin'_ folks ain't nice to 'em. What'll we put in the paper then?'

"Mis' Sykes drew herself up like she does sometimes in society.