Now, I ask you, is it not reasonable to suppose that the Commercial Club, being right _in_ Kalamazoo, where it can count the people every day, should be more accurate in its figures than the Almanac, which is published in far-away New York? Errors like this on the part of the Almanac might be excused, once or twice, on the ground of human fallibility or occasional misprint, but when the Almanac keeps on cutting down the figures given by the Commercial Clubs and Chambers of Commerce of town after town, it begins to look like wilful misrepresentation if not actual spitework. That, to tell the truth, was the reason I walked around and looked in all the windows. I decided to get at the bottom of this matter--to find out the cause for these discrepancies, and if I caught the Almanac in what appeared to be a deliberate lie, to expose it, here. With this in view, I started to count the people myself. Unfortunately, however, I did not start early enough in the evening. When I had only a little more than half of them counted, they began to put out their lights and go upstairs to bed. And, oddly enough, though they leave their parlor shades up, they have a way of drawing those in their bedrooms. I was, therefore, forced to stop counting. I do not attempt to explain this Kalamazoo custom with regard to window shades. All I can say is that, for whatever reason they follow it, their custom is not metropolitan. New Yorkers do things just the other way around. They pull down their parlor shades, but leave their bedroom shades up. Any one who has lived in a New York apartment house in summer can testify to that. Probably it is all accounted for by the fact that in a relatively small city, like Kalamazoo, the census takers go around and count the people in the early evening, whereas in New York it is necessary for those who make the reckoning to work all night in order to--as one might say--get all the figures. CHAPTER X GRAND RAPIDS THE "ELECT" I know a man whose wife is famous for her cooking. That is a strange thing for a prosperous and charming woman to be famous for to-day, but it is true. When they wish to give their friends an especial treat, the wife prepares the dinner; and it _is_ a treat, from "pigs in blankets" to strawberry shortcake. The husband is proud of his wife's cooking, but I have often noticed, and not without a mild amusement, that when we praise it past a certain point he begins to protest that there are lots of other things that she can do. You might think then, if you did not understand him, that he was belittling her talent as a cook. "Oh, yes," he says, in what he intends to be a casual tone, "she can cook very well. But that's not all. She's the best mother I ever saw--sees right into the children, just as though she were one of them. She makes most of their clothes, too. And in spite of all that, she keeps up her playing--both piano and harp. We'll get her to play the harp after dinner."