“By count,” he answers, nodding, and stood a minute looking over at the roofs and the water tower. “You feel that,” he says, “when you see them the way I do. From up high. I keep seeing them skimming under me, little places whose names don’t show. And it always seems that way--like the family at breakfast--or working--or sitting around the arc lamp. You’re splendid--you little towns. What you do is what the world does.” A kind of shiver took me in the back of my head. “It looks as if such nice things were going on over there--in Friendship Village,” he says, his voice sort of wrapping about the name. “Election day is going on,” I says, “day after to-morrow. But it won’t be so very nice.” “No,” he says, “they aren’t very nice--yet.” That made me think of something. “Have you been in many cities and dropped down into many towns?” I ask’ him. “Several,” says he,--sort of rueful. “On election day?” I says. “Sometimes,” he answered. “Well, then,” I says, “maybe you can tell me what they do on election day in cities. Don’t they ever have exercises?” “Exercises?” he says over, blank. “Why, yes,” I says, “though I dunno just how I mean that. But don’t they ever open up the city hall and have singing and speeches--not political speeches, but ones about folks and about living? I should think they must do that somewheres--‘most anybody would of thought of that. And have the young folks there, and have them that’s going to vote sort of--well, _commenced_, like college. Don’t they do that, places?” When he shook his head I was worried for fear he’d think I was crazy. “No,” he says, “I never heard of their doing that anywhere--yet.” But when he says that “yet” I wasn’t worried any more. And I burst right out and told him about our trouble in Friendship Village, and about the “best” people never voting, and the city limits folks not coming in for it, and about our two candidates, and about Eppleby, that hadn’t a ghost of a show. “Us ladies,” I wound up, “wanted to have a kind of an all-together campaign--with mass meetings of folks to kind of talk over the town, mutual. And we wanted to get up some exercises to make election day a real true day, and to roust folks up to being not so very far from the way things was meant to be. But the men folks said it wasn’t never done so. They give us that reason.” The bird-man looked at me, and nodded. “I fancy it isn’t,” he says, “--yet.” But he didn’t say anything else, and I thought he thought I was woman-foolish; so to cover up, I says, hasty: “_Could_ you leave me hear you talk a little about it? I mean about flying. It’s old to you, but it’s after-I-die to me. I never shall do it. So far I’ve never seen it. But oh, I like to hear about it. It seems the freest-feeling thing we’ve ever done.”