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 Oh, what has become of the ornery boy, Who used to chew slip'ry elm, "rosum" and wheat: And say "jest a coddin'" and "what d'ye soy;" And wear rolled-up trousers all out at the seat? And where is the boy who had shows in the barn, And "skinned a cat backards" and turned "summersets;" The boy who had faith in a snake-feeder yarn, And always smoked grape vine and corn cigarettes? Where now is the small boy who spat on his bait, And proudly stood down near the foot of the class, And always went "barefooted" early and late, And washed his feet nights on the dew of the grass? Where is the boy who could swim on his back, And dive and tread water and lay his hair, too; The boy who would jump off the spring-board ker-whack, And light on his stomach as I used to do? Oh where and oh where is the old-fashioned boy? Has the old-fashioned boy with his old-fashioned ways, Been crowded aside by the Lord Fauntleroy,-- The cheap tinselled make-believe, full of alloy Without the pure gold of the rollicking joy Of the old-fashioned boy in the old-fashioned days? [Illustration: The Court of Boyville The Martyrdom of Mealy Jones]