The columnist names himself: “The Sentimental Romanoff.” He it is who named John Short, political rebel and painting teacher: “Sparrow Short.” He perpetually hounds the mayor with the nicknames: “Slick Slack Kopensky” and “Sims’ Bitters.” This last is because Mayo Sims is deemed the boss and Kopensky his dose to be administered to the town in regular spoonsful.
The deathless industrial revolution that followed the war with Germany still rumbles along elsewhere, with strikes, boycotting, blacklistings, picketings, street barricades, dynamitings, massacres, and general annoyances and bedevilment:—advancing, retreating, and advancing again, through three generations and around the world.
But, for the most part, the soreheads outside of Springfield, particularly those stewing in their own caldrons in Chicago, serve vicariously to set us free. We are wrestling with more up-to-date nuisances, with a brighter goal in sight.
It is the dream of a human beehive far from the Marxian society. It is something on the newest New Harmony model, a Springfield that is democratic, artistic, religious, and patriarchal, and therefore following many of the most ancient forms and metaphors of orthodoxy, as an electric light may be softened and given its final character by the shell of an ancient horn lantern.
April 7:—This evening I take Avanel Boone to the Henry George dinner. When I see that long array of distinguished citizens and Avanel names off to me their offices and attributes, I realize that Henry George triumphs in an especial manner over the soul of Springfield, and I rejoice in this with all my heart, for I deeply revere the man and glory in his influence. Avanel first points out to me the followers of her saints:—St. Scribe of the Shrines, who has only recently departed this world, and St. Friend, The Bread Giver, who is still to be seen in the Springfield Cathedral, active and wonderful. And here are some of the principal followers of this dynasty of saints:—the pious Darsies, the wholesome Hollys, the sad Rancies, torch bearers of liberalism. Among them are endless officers and privates in the ranks of the Amazonian and the Horseshoe Brotherhood, all religious and political radicals. Avanel is much amused to point out at the dinner an equal number of opposites, though often of the same nominal allegiances, the snobbish Rues, the wirehaired Radleys, the iron-ribbed Standings, and some of the less powerful of the mayor’s faction, some young Kopenskys, Rocks, and the like, who have no more to do with the spirit of Henry George than they have to do with the New Testament.
My dear Avanel grows more sarcastic and almost breaks up the meeting at our end of the table when Jefferson Radley, henchman and slave of the wicked Doctor Mayo Sims, opens the evening with a speech in which he names Henry George and Alexander Hamilton, in the same tone of voice and with the same praise.
And now I get my first sight of Black Hawk Boone. As he rises to speak, my dear Avanel blushes with ill-repressed pride and she cannot keep the sparkle from her eyes and the tension of embarrassment and love from her face as Black Hawk shakes his mane.
He is a short man, with a curly big black beard such as Ashurbanipal and Nimrod must have shaken at their foes. His cheek is flushed with anger and his midnight eyes give out lightning and he hits the table till the dishes rattle and as good as denounces Jefferson Radley as a hypocrite and a scoundrel. He is plainly one of those accustomed to having his way completely, as far as he has it at all, for few people will have the energy to combat the wrath he puts into any battle or into such a thing as a pretty after-dinner tribute to a saint. Boone howls, and snaps his teeth together. His terrible sneer would destroy all but a rhinoceros or a seasoned politician.
At length Boone possesses himself enough to speak clearly and with much economic eloquence, a perfect bore to Avanel and myself. She is trying to fascinate me by allowing me to hold two of her fingers under the table. Then suddenly the banquet ends and she goes home with her father, looking severely at me. And she kisses her father, and whispers in his ear—no doubt that he made an excellent speech. Boone does not so much as glance my way and I must wait till another time to talk to him. He has never been at home when I have called on his daughter.
April 10:—The city hall is apparently less rigid than of old, a masterpiece of the happy-go-lucky. Mayor Slick Slack Kopensky, “Sims’ Bitters,” is sitting next to me at a coffee house table with Sims and Kusuko and Cave Man Thomas, all parts of the City Hall machine. Kopensky looks like the pictures of President William McKinley. While by no means so large a character, he is, by all reports, much more picturesque in his political methods. He is even now saying to his coterie and with intent that those near by may hear if they so desire: “All the governments above that of the city weigh on the people like a hat of lead. But the government of our City Hall, as long as I have my way, is going to be as gay and easy as safety will allow. As long as the Public School bunch act like a bunch of regulators and hoot-owls, we will beat them to pulp.”