"Without the help of no great big clumsy convention either," Mis' Sykes stuck in. Then the first thing I heard was Mis' Amanda Toplady up onto her feet nominating me to go for a delegate to that convention, fare paid out of the Cemetery Improvement Treasury. Guess what the first thought was that came to my head? Oh, ain't it like women had been wrapped up in something that we're just beginning to peek out of? Guess what I thought. Yes, that was it. When I spoke out my first thought, I says: "Oh, _ladies_, I can't go. I ain't got a rag fit to wear." It took quite a while to persuade me. All the party dress I had was out of the spare-room curtains, and I didn't have a wrap at all--I'm just one of them jacket women. And finally I says to them: "You look here. Suppose I write a note to the president of the whole thing, and tell her just what clothes I have got, and ask her if anybody'd best go, looking like me." And that was what I did do. I kept a copy of the letter I wrote her. I says: "_Dear President_: "Us ladies have heard about the meeting set for next week, and we thought we'd send somebody up from our Friendship Village Married Ladies Cemetery Improvement Sodality. And we thought we'd send me. But I wouldn't want to come and have everybody ashamed of me. I've only got my two years suit, and a couple of waists and one thin dress--and they're all just every day--or not so much so. I'm asking you, like I feel I can ask a woman, president or not. Would you come at all, like that, if you was me. "Respectfully, "CALLIOPE MARSH." I kept her answer too, and this is what she said: "_Dear Miss Marsh_: "Just as I have told my other friends, let me tell you: By all means we want you to come. Do not disappoint us. But I believe that your club is not entitled to a delegate. So I am sending you this card. Will you attend the meeting, and the reception as my guest?" And then her name. Sometimes, when I get discouraged about us, I take out that letter, and read it through. I remember when the train left that morning, how I looked back on the village, sitting there in its big arm chair of hills, with green cushions of woods dropped around, and wreaths of smoke curling up from contented chimneys. And over on the South slope our big new brick county house, with thick lips and lots of arched eye-brows, the house that us ladies was getting seats to put in the yard of. "Say what who will," thinks I, "I love that little town. And I guess it's just about as good as any of us could expect."