able to speak the language of the people whose rights we are
seeking to destroy, we will never know how utterly futile are our
conspiracies. But that is immaterial.

The main point that the gentle reader should bear in mind is this:
The town of Boyville is free and independent; governed only by the
ancient laws, made by the boys of the elder days--by the boys who
found bottom in the rivers that flowed out of Eden; by little Seth,
little Enoch, little Methuselah, and little Noah; by the boys who
threw mud balls from willow withes broken from trees whereon David
hung his harp a thousand years thereafter. For Boyville was old when
Nineveh was a frontier post.

Boyville hears from afar the buzz about principalities and powers,
the clatter of javelins and the clash of arms, the hubbub of the
"Pride and pomp and circumstance of glorious war." The courtiers of
Boyville cheer for each new hero, and claim fellowship with all "like
gentlemen unafraid." But the Free Town has its own sovereign, makes
its own idols. And the clatter and clash and hubbub that attend the
triumphs of the kingdoms of the earth pass by unconquered Boyville as
the shadow of a dream.




THE MARTYRDOM OF "MEALY" JONES


A WAIL IN B MINOR