"And, O Lord, I memorial all the rest of them--the soldiers of fifty years ago no more than the soldiers of now--the soldiers of Here no more than the soldiers of Over There. O Lord, I memorial them all, and I pray for them that survive over there--put all Your strength on them, Lord, as far as I am concerned, for us survivors here, we don't need You as much as they do--them that's new bereaved and new desolated. For Christ's sake. Amen." On my way home, I saw Luke Norris sitting out by the door of his office again. He never went to any exercises because his wind-pipe was liable to shut up on him, and it broke up the program some, getting his breath through to him. "Calliope," he says, "we want you should go on to the Committee for opening the new Town Hall, in about two months from now. We want the jim-dandiest, swell-upest celebration this town has ever had. Twenty years of unexampled prosperity--" I stood still and stared down on him. "Honest," I says, "do you want me to help in a prosperity celebration _this_ Summer?" "Sure," he says, "women are in on it." "Luke," I says. "I dunno how you'll feel about that when you come to think it over. But I feel--" Bennie, fussing round on the side-walk, came over, tugging a chunk of wood. I thought at first he was carrying a brick. I sat down in a handy chair, just inside Luke's door. "Luke," I says, "Luke! That ain't the kind of a celebration this town had ought to have. You listen here to me...." III Sometimes, when I can't sleep, I think about the next two Summer months. I lie awake and think how it all went, that planning, from first to last. I think about the idea, and about how it started, and kindled, and spread, and flamed. And I think about what finally came of it. For one thing, it was the first living, human thing that Friendship Village ever got up that there wasn't a soul that kicked about. You can't name another thing that any of the town ever went in for, that the rest didn't get up and howl. Pavement--some of us said we couldn't afford it, "not now." New bridge--half of us says we was bonded to the limit as it was. Sewerage--three-fourths of us says for our town it was a engineering impossibility. Buying the electric light plant, that would be pure socialism. Central school building--a vast per cent of us allows it would make it too far for the children to walk, though out of school hours they run all over the town, scot-free and foot loose, skate, sled and hoop. As a town none of us would unite on nothing. Never, not till this time. But this time it was different. And even if not anything had come of it, I'd be glad to remember the kind of flash I got from different folks, when we came to tell them about it. I went first to the Business Men's Association, because it was them that was talking the Town Hall celebration the hardest. I'd been to them before, about playgrounds, about band concerts, about taking care of the park; and some of them were down on us ladies.