Everyone was cheered up, therefore, when Mayor Hector Civek announced a mass meeting in Town Square. Bonfires were lit and the reviewing stand that was used for the annual Founders' Day parade was hauled out as a speaker's platform. Civek was late. The crowd, bundled up against the cold, was stamping their feet and beginning to shout a bit when he arrived. There was a medium-sized cheer as the mayor climbed to the platform. "Fellow citizens," he began, then stopped to search through his overcoat pockets. "Well," he went on, "I guess I put the speech in an inside pocket and it's too cold to look for it. I know what it says, anyway." This brought a few laughs. Don Cort stood near the edge of the crowd and watched the people around him. They mostly had a no-nonsense look about them, as if they were not going to be satisfied with more oratory. Civek said, "I'm not going to keep you standing in the cold and tell you what you already know--how our food supplies are dwindling, how we're using up our stocks of coal and fuel oil with no immediate hope of replacement--you know all that." "We sure do, Hector," somebody called out. "Yes; so, as I say, I'm not going to talk about what the problem is. We don't need words--we need action." He paused as if he expected a cheer, or applause, but the crowd merely waited for him to go on. "If Superior had been hit by a flood or a tornado," Civek said, "we could look to the Red Cross and the State or Federal Government for help. But we've been the victims of a far greater misfortune, torn from the bosom of Mother Earth and flung--" "Oh, come on, Hector," an old woman said. "We're getting froze." "I'm sorry about that, Mrs. Potts," Civek said. "You should be home where it's warm." "We ran out of coal for the furnace and now we're running out of logs. Are you going to do something about that?" "I'll tell you what I'm going to do, Mrs. Potts, for you and all the other wonderful people here tonight. We're going to put a stop to this lawlessness we never had before. We're going to make Superior a place to be proud of. Superior has changed--risen, you might say, to a new status. We're more than a town, now. We're free and separate, not only from Ohio, but from the United States. "We're a sovereign place, a--a sovereignty, and we need new methods to cope with new conditions, to restore law and order, to see that all our subjects--our citizen-subjects--are provided for." The crowd had become hushed as Civek neared his point. "To that noble end," Civek went on, "I dedicate myself, and I take this momentous step and hereby proclaim the existence of the Kingdom of Superior"--he paused to take a deep breath--"and proclaim myself its first King." He stopped. His oratory had carried him to a climax and he didn't quite know where to go from there. Maybe he expected cheers to carry him over, but none came. There was complete silence except for the crackling of the bonfires.