The Rock family began as the Michaelites began. For a long time it was a tradition that every boy of the Rock clan must dig coal with the pick for a certain number of years, and belong to the Miner’s Union. But these people gradually rose from labor-union officers, who dug, in a nominal way, to able but unwholesome fops who would rather be hanged than dirty their own hands in coal.
They hate the Michaelites in a very special way for going doggedly and literally on with their horse-shoeing and hammering out swords. But the Rock family know when they have had enough and hate the open accusation of Singaporianism that is the result of the antics of “Beau Nash.”
It seems that “Beau Nash” has become a fanatic, he has been initiated into the devilish religion, and he defies the committee from Mayo Sims, Slick Slack Kopensky, and the Rocks, that has subdued all the other young representatives of the flying snobs. He says he will do as he pleases, and do it soon, that this is a land of religious liberty, that he chooses the green glass god of Singapore, of his own free will, and there is no treason in it, that he will have the law on whoever molests him.
Now there are shouting and cries below and there are jinglings of all the phones in the lookout rooms and when we answer one we are told that Nash has already ascended and is coming from the west. Almost instantly we see him and then he is directly above the Truth Tower, circling, going up, and circling and going down, while his own old faction, in the street, grow angrier every minute. He has painted his whole machine the Singaporian green and there are all the special signs and seals of Singapore he can put there, upon the body of his machine, and finally, in insult to our virtuous city, he flies low that we may see them and then flies high that we may hate him.
But on his third descent, a Robin Redbreast machine, with all speed on, sweeps up from the north. Nash expects a threat, but the man in the other machine begins to shoot at Nash, just as he is above Washington Park, and down comes the dead man by the Washington Park Pavilion, with a terrific crash of broken wings, and absurd Singapore has her first American martyr.
The newspaper people come pouring into the Truth Tower. We all send the story to the papers as we can. It seems that the avenger is the son of the Mayor. It is “Crawling Jim Kopensky,” the new President of the Robin Redbreast flying association. He has been president twenty-four hours and has made haste to vindicate his office.
Of course there will be no prosecution of Jim. In the first place he is the son of the Mayor. In the second place he is now a newspaper hero. In the third place he has removed the blasphemer, hated alike by those with millions in gold and alcohol buried away, and those with teetotal tendencies and no money but their legal salaries.
May 26:—Everyone has forgotten the flying machine feud. An Anti-Singapore panic is on. St. Friend has started a series of weekday sermons against Singapore in the Cathedral and Rabbi Ezekiel is doing the same in his Temple and they are moving all secular forums to co-operate. And The Boone Ax whacks and chops at the issue for no one hates a Singaporian better than Black Hawk Boone, the roaring cinnamon bear. It is hard to make out any justification of a war at this exact hour.
When, in his youth, St. Friend made the Pilgrimage of St. Scribe he heard certain strange political talk near the dazzling temple of the cocaine Buddha of Singapore. Three half-English Eurasians were deep in future world politics. This conversation temporarily spoiled his meditations on the real and beautiful Prince Gautama, which otherwise continued throughout the whole of Asia. Ever since that day, St. Friend has been giving his attention to the Japanese and Chinese denunciations of the Singaporians, especially since those denunciations have been so stoutly re-echoed by Joseph Bartholdi Michael, the Second, the greatest American representative in the legislature of the World Government. That tremendous hall has rung with the hammer-blows of Michael, the Blacksmith, against international treason, the arrogant Singaporian cry of “States Rights.”
St. Friend and the Rabbi and Boone, backed by the Board of Education, proclaim that they have been studying the wily local policy of the man from Singapore. It seems to be first, to promote confusion. St. Friend declares that the stranger has incited “by peculiar and devious means” all the recklessness of the children of the city and that “the defiance of Beau Nash was a test case” and that “the man from Singapore hoped, if the Beau survived, to build a green glass temple here.” The man from Singapore is really a public benefit judged by the mere surface of things, since he is the scapegoat for all our recent fights and fevers. But no man touches him. He goes on teaching in the University, unmolested. His classes in the Malay Peninsula languages and literature are well attended by the sons and daughters of those who denounce him. Many wait for any slip of the tongue or wrong turn of the voice and cannot catch him.