They cannot help liking the jolly old Malay lore about things which have nothing to do with politics and which are the whole theme of the brown professor’s discourses.
May 27:—Boone and his faction have slacked up on the Singaporian scent and are back on the old argument. Boone declares that the University must be put more firmly in the position of censor of the administration, and after all there are, by actual count, a larger group of those, supposed to have buried gold and buried alcohol, still using flying machines than the list of our “common people.” The Snobs have merely put on the Robin Redbreast uniform. And he boldly prints the list of those morally certain to have much buried alcohol and gold but puts it so deftly there is no risk of suit. And so, to make good, the City Hall starts an informal flying festival this afternoon and crowds anyone who can fly at all into machines that come pouring down from Chicago in response to orders from our City Hall. But they are all Robin Redbreast machines.
May 28:—The Mayor is winning. Simply by giving everyone a ride who can possibly be persuaded to ride, he has outnumbered in one day, by actual count of temporary flyers, the active Boone constituency, and what is called: “The Moral Issue” has completely disappeared. But Boone turns today to a personal issue. He gives all possible attention through coffee-house henchmen, and openly, in The Boone Ax, to the discrediting of “Crawling Jim.” And true or false, the stories are whispered around the town about Jim that will spoil him as a political asset and ruin his glory as the punisher of “Beau Nash.”
He has been guilty of certain cruelties to animals and children. It is whispered that the police have clearly established it. They are keeping the records. They are hoping they may some day have the freedom to act. And so Boone gets Jim “where he lives,” for rumor hurts Jim to the soul. Since he is himself a peddler of little scandals, it is his world. He is said to be a carrier of everything in the way of poisoned small-talk to that strange beauty, Mara, the daughter of Singapore. When the small talk turns against him, as he gathers it, he droops and mopes indeed for an hour or two.
But he is still president of the Robin Redbreast Club and he takes his consolation this afternoon by extraordinary evolutions in the air, near where he killed Beau Nash. He goes through as many curves as a pigeon bred for flying tricks. And it is said on the street that the Robin Redbreast Club will keep him in office out of respect for his luck. He has always been a reckless but endlessly successful trick flyer. So by midnight Jim has won the cheap rumor battle in the coffee houses and Yellow Dance Halls and drug stores. And why not? Boone should be in better business.
May 29:—The town wakes up this morning to find the Snobs asserting themselves again, though now it is the parents and grandparents that are more at fault, not the high school aviators. The families on the list Boone has published, along with their sympathizers, have in the night put gold-foil on conspicuous portions of the cupolas of their cottage roofs or the roofs of their club houses.
May 30:—There is a scandal in the Microscope and Telescope Factory. Old Montague Rock is one of the chief men of the factory. Patricia Anthony, the Proud, is leading a strike against him because of a certain contract, which he long ago secured, for lenses which have been delivered for over a year in a steady stream to a firm on the western coast. It now transpires that these people were agents for the Singaporian Government and Patricia Anthony is morally certain, Singapore is using these lenses in the new mysterious war machine which is a step beyond the lens gun. The Singaporians are presumed to be laying up these machines already, for the day of Singaporian rebellion against the World Government.
Old Montague Rock has always had an irritating style of address and he has made a speech to the strikers in a fashion that has not helped toward peace one little bit. He has said this very morning that the Singaporians are the souls of honor and most admirable, aside from their religion, with which, of course, he has nothing to do. And that they are the height of Asiatic aristocracy at all times. He has said our city should be flattered to furnish them with lenses for guns for local police work in Asia. And so he continues to paraphrase his speech in conversations with reporters at Fifth and Monroe and in Coe’s Book Store, and wherever he meets his friends and enemies, through the whole afternoon.
So The Boone Ax advocates a strikers’ parade for tomorrow afternoon and Boone strains his whole credit and prestige in the city to make it a success. Those societies, etc. that are to be the principal decorative features are listed, in this afternoon’s papers, and the line of march is printed. They are to assemble on Second and Monroe, near the old arsenal, and march south on Second to Capital Avenue, east on Capital Avenue to Fifth, north on Fifth to Monroe, east on Monroe to Sixth, etc.
May 31:—The Anti King Coal Parade goes by this afternoon with many surprises, not in the official list of splendors. The event was scheduled to be called: “The Parade of the Striking Lens Factory” but Montague Rock being often called King Coal, the other title gets into the headlines.