nd explained
to the women, whom she considered of a higher social caste than the
lodge women, that she was "doing it to help Mr. Handy." She did a little
church work for the same reason, but her soul was in the Federation, for
it insured her social status as neither lodge nor church could do. So
she put herself under the protecting seal-lined wing of Mrs. Julia Neal
Worthington who on account of her efforts to clean the streets we at
the office had been taught by Colonel Morrison to know as the Joan of
the trash-cans. And Miss Larrabee, our society reporter, told us that
Mrs. Handy was the only woman in town who did not smile into her
handkerchief when Mrs. Worthington, who had trained down to one hundred
and ninety-seven pounds five and three-eighths ounces, gave her course
of lectures on delsarte before the Federation.

It was Mrs. Handy who encouraged Mrs. Worthington to open her salon. But
as there were lodge meetings the first three nights in the week, and
prayer-meetings in the middle of the week, and as the choirs met for
practice, and the whist clubs met for business the last of the week, the
salon did not seem to take with the town, and so was discontinued. Then
Mrs. Worthington and Mrs. Handy sought other fields. And the first field
they stumbled into was the court-house square. For fifty years the
farmers near our town had been hitching at the racks provided by the
county commissioners. But Mrs. Worthington decided that the time had
come for a change and that the town was getting large enough to take
down the hitching-racks. So, as chairman of the Municipal Improvement
section of the City Federation, Mrs. Worthington began war on the
hitching-racks. At the Federation meetings for three months there were
reports from committees appointed to interview the councilmen; reports
of committees to interview the county commissioners--who were obdurate;
reports of committees to lease new ground for the hitching rack stands;
reports of the legal committee; reports of the sanitary committee, and
through it all Mrs. Worthington rose at every meeting and declared that
the hitching racks must be destroyed. And as she was rated in
Bradstreet's report at nearly half a million dollars, her words had much
force.

The town was beginning to stir itself. The merchants were with the
women--because the women bought the dry goods and groceries--and we
forgot about the farmers. To all this milling among the people Handy was
obliviou