Abigail reported first, about the thirty odd she’d been to see. “But,” she winds up, “Calliope’s got something to say that I agree to, over and above the report. We’ve talked it over, her and me, and--” she adds with her nice dignity, “as a Friendship Village business woman, I’m going to leave her speak for me.” So I said what I had to say about them I’d been to see, and what they had said about the club. And then I come to the heart of it, and I held up David’s little clock. I told ’em about it, and about him. I suppose everybody else has stories to tell like David’s, about the folks, young or old, that is living graves, little or big, of the kind of skill and energy and patience that they’ve never had the chance or the courage or the little will-power inside ’em--to develop. And there it stays in ’em, undeveloped, till they die. I believe it’s truer of all of us--of you and me--than we’ve any idea of. And this is what I tried to say to ’em that night, when I showed ’em David’s little clock. I didn’t say anything about the girls to Mis’ Cripps’s boarding house--I kept them, and the rest of ’em, in my heart, along with that crocheted dress up to the County House, and Grandma Stuart’s wreck of a home--the man’s knife, the child’s ring, the door-key. And I says: “Now, we’ve visited all these folks that the Evening Club was thought of for. And we’ve found most of ’em in favor of having the club. I’m free to confess that I hoped some of ’em wouldn’t be. I hoped some of ’em would say they’d rather be paid better wages than to be give a club. But perhaps it’s all right. Mebbe the club is one step more we’ve got to take before we can get down to the big thing underneath it all. But it ain’t the last step--and I’d almost rather not bother with it--I’d almost rather get on to the big thing right away.” “May I ask,” snaps out Silas, clean forgetting his chairmanshipping and acting like he was talking to me in the Post-Office store beside the cheese, “may I ask what you mean by the ‘big thing’?” “Oh,” I says, “that’s what I’ve been thinking about while I set here. Oh,” I says, “you men--you’ve made the town. You’ve done everything once. Do it again--now when the next thing is here to do. You’ve done your best with your own property and your own homes. Now do your best with folks!” “Ain’t that the purpose of this here club we’re a-talking about?” says Silas. “Ain’t that what I been a-saying? What do you mean--folks?” Silas winds up, irritable. Silas knows customers, agents, correspondents, partners, clients, colleagues, opponents, plaintiffs, defendants _and_ competitors. But he don’t know _folks_.