Boone roars away with the others, who are on his right and left, like Aaron and Hur holding up the hands of Moses. And it is only at the end of some long and well dramatized skirmish that Boone wins by forcing the issues in his paper the _Boone Ax_ and scaring a more cowardly four in Kopensky’s faction to vote with him temporarily on what seems a purely educational issue. It is not always the same four he bulldozes and many and obvious are his plots. Drug Store Smith and Coffee Kusuko supply about one-fifth of cold science to the Mayor’s City Hall stew. They represent the “slick” side of Kopensky. They have natty ideas of dress and natty ideas of administration. The remainder of Kopensky’s routine political workers are slack in every way except in the matter of secret party-discipline. The columnist Romanoff in a charitable mood says, in the _Boone Ax_ for April 11, 2018:—“When we view the soggy-souled but amiable group of city fathers around Kopensky, we rejoice. There is no sign of a complete clean-up of the ages. The patriot is still at home in the government. And, as Andrew Jackson knew, there is an intrinsic governing power in any mass of humanity linked by friendship and under American skies. Along with the City Hall dishonesty there goes a certain mercy and fraternity, far from the sternness of the editor of this paper, who may take my remarks for what they are worth, and he may fire me if he chooses. Let my boss, the editor, admit, since he must, that the City Hall gang keep our more angular truth-telling moods from torturing the town beyond reason. As it is, I declare myself the only real jester among all our children of light.” April 15:—As I wander about, I am glad that in my former life I was a member of the Anti-Saloon League of Central Illinois. There is no such thing as a saloon to be seen. The bar room is as extinct as the trilobite. Coca-Cola and Bevo have their new successors every day, along with mysterious elaborations of coffee and tea, and spiced drinks from the Jungles of South America. And, of course, after a hundred non-alcoholic years the soda fountains have tremendous importance. Drug Store Smith, member of the city council, is the local Soda Fountain King. He is now the owner of all the drug stores, including Dodds’ Drug Store, which keeps its old location at Fifth and Monroe. I have indeed a curious impression as I go into Dodds’ for a soda. Fifth and Monroe reminds me of a century before. It is still the street-car center of our town. There are as of old long benches in Dodds’ where people are waiting to take street cars and there are the same revolving stools along the soda fountain counter but that counter is twice as long and there are tables for customers now. The sodas are as good as those wonders Jim Sylva used to mix, but no better.