The ladies and gentlemen who come in for initiation into that curiosity, a Sumatra chess game are many of them Jim’s most devoted henchmen in Jim’s presumably highly democratic and now triumphant Robin Redbreast Aviation Club. They were deft enough to capture the club for him. They are people of breeding and assurance. As long as it existed, at the house of the Mythical Velaska the most famous yellow dance hall, they set the pace. Tonight they talk openly of their jolly little lynching of Surto Hurdenburg. They talk of how to bring back to town all the malcontents who have left because of the suppression of the Yellow Halls. They speak of them as martyrs and heroes. And then they talk as though they will leave also. With scarcely an exception they belong to Springfield’s senior families, many of whom have been here as long as the Boones, and some of them before the Michaels. Scions of the house of Montague Rock are among them, including Montague Rock, Junior. By their voices and a thousand impalpable signs I know that, with scarcely an exception, they have been educated out of town at male and female finishing schools, on funds or power secured by the secret sale of their hereditary buried gold and buried alcohol. These schools are, obviously, the last stand of American plutocracy, that has grown most subtle in what appears to be its final battle. Here, at this party among friends, with no spies, and in perfect confidence, they use with an exaggerated freedom all the secret codes, passwords, and hints of manner that indicate the hidden masters of the land, the tribes with buried gold and buried alcohol. They are well grounded in the main books of plutocratic and alcoholic apologetics, one of which has been written by a fellow townsman, and it appears today, in Coe’s Book Store:—“The Graces of Bacchus and Mammon” by Doctor Mayo Sims. Every poet, architect, artist, or musician who in any fine indirect way licks the boots of money, or sings sweetly of strong drink, has their approval. Many such craftsmen have been induced by gentle means to drop a delicate word for Singapore as the ultimate land of real aristocracy, and dangerous but marvelously inspiring cocaine. Mara’s guests have been taught in these out of town schools to hate our educational system from the World’s Fair of our University down to the first grade, ward school. They are taught in their male and female finishing schools that the whole city of Springfield and all such cities are infamously democratic. These children are taught they must not let one tone of voice indicate anything more than a suffering tolerance of that system of which, in this city, Black Hawk Boone is the official head. As the evening progresses, all this crowd gaily says that Jim’s luck in aviation holds in Sumatra chess, and the ladies whisper in their delicate fashion that they hope he stays lucky when it comes to love.