City and town life -- Fiction; Foundlings -- Fiction
"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.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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