"Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss spoke first, with a kind of a bright manner of having thought it all out over her dish pan and her bread pan. There is this about belonging to Sodality: We just live Sodality every day, around our work. We don't forget it except to meetings, same as some. "'Well, I just tell you what,' Mame says, 'I think now is our time to get a big monument for the middle of Cemetery that'll do some credit to the Dead. All our little local headstones is quite tasty and shows our interest in them that's gone before; but not one of them is real up-to-date. Let's buy a nice monument that'll show from the railroad track.' "I spoke up short off from the back parlour, where I set 'scallopin' a bedspread about as big as the carpet. "'Who to?' I says. "'Oh, I donno's it makes much differ'nce,' Mis' Holcomb says, warming to her theme, 'so's it was some leadin' citizen. We might take a town vote on it.' "Mis' Sturgis set up straight, eyebrows up. I donno how it is, but Mis' Sturgis's pompadour always seems so much higher as soon as she gets interested. "'Why, my gracious,' she says, 'we might earn quite a lot o' money that way. We might have a regular votin' contest on who that's dead should get the monument--so much a vote an' the names of the successful ones run every night in the _Daily_--' "'Well-a, why do it for anybody dead?' says Libby Liberty. 'Why not get the monument here and have it on view an' then have folks kind of bid on it for their own, real votin' style. In the cities now everybody picks out their own monuments ahead of time. That would be doing for the Living, the way Mr. Insley said.' "'Oh, there'd be hard feelin' that way,' spoke up Mis' Uppers, decided. 'Whoever got it, an' got buried under it, never could feel it was his own stone. Everybody that had bought votes for themselves could come out walking in the Cemetery Sunday afternoons and could point out the monument and tell how much of a money interest they had in it. Oh, no, I don't think that'd do at all.' "'Well, stick to havin' it for the Dead, then,' Libby gives in. 'We've got to remember our constitution.' "Mis' Amanda Toplady was always going down after something in the bottom of her pocket, set low in her full black skirt. She done this now, for a spool or a lozenger. And she says, meantime: 'Seems like that'd be awful irreverent, connectin' up the Dead with votes that way.' "'_My_ notion,' says Mis' Sykes, with her way of throwin' up one corner of her head, 'it ain't one-tenth part as irreverent as forgettin' all about 'em.' "'Of course it ain't,' agreed Mis' Hubbelthwait. 'Real, true irreverence is made up of buryin' folks and leavin' 'em go their way. Why, I bet you there ain't any one of 'em that wouldn't be cheered up by bein' voted for.'