Stars and Stripes from Arkansas City, Arkansas • 2

STARS AND STRIPES. 30 the fight below, as "Winslow" has said of the vanished Amateur but we buckle on our harness again and plunge into the fray. The old laurels fade, and we lose reputation by what Scott says the Scottish lawyers call the negative prescription. We remember the counsel of Ulysses to Achilles in Shakespeare. And doubly do we burn to wage the battle again, when we behold the Pistols and Falstaffs and Parolles strut and swagger around the field when Bottom and Slender and Dogberry set themselves up as the literati and when a high-heeled, grandiloquent, fustian New Constitution seeks to make a provincial of the Author and to get up a "trust" on the Roman birthright for the Editor.

When Pseudo-Amateurs set the juggernaut wheel of politics against the fair neck of True Amateur Journalism and attempt to drive the Lilliputs with the reins of falsehood then the honest blood in a real Amateur's veins boils, and he bubbles over with just indignation. When Chicago is followed by the perjury of Carter and the malice of Burger, the blades of all who truly love the cause flash from their scabbards no matter how long lain quiet and their lips breathe the vow never to sheath the brands till Justice triumphs and Knavery is Drummed Out of Camp At the late Convention the keynote was struck, and the bugle call has gone forth to the clans. When Hochstadter stationed like Honesty's Watchdog at Burger's right elbow sprang to bis feet and thrilled the excited assembly with his prompt challenge of that rogue's count, it was no Woollen finesse, no party political clap-trap but he stuck the first blow on the crest of Rascality in the opened campaign of Amateurdom against Pseudo-Amateurdom. The cry is up, and the enemy are' desperate. They recognize the blossoming of a crisis.

They see Buffalo with the smoke and din of battle lying but a little way ahead. Sndom and Gomorrah cries out to Chicngo, her sister in sin and able left-bower "Take heart, we've a little scheme to get us all to Buffalo and the Windy City qtiid-nuncs Barker's and Carter's slaves of the lamp respond in ecstasy "We'll see you one better Barker has sold us into Egypt as far as the Credential Committee and machine-work of the Napa is concerned he, who uses the supposably sacred minutes of a convention to reiterate a downright lie, will hardly refrain from tampering with the privileges of any political authority in fact his record has been a series of unscrupulous schemes and ambitions. The "amateurs of comparative insignificance" who will flood our portals this July bid to be as thick as the spears of Xerxes. Genuine Amateurdom can baffle the contemptible foe by massing itself into an impregnable organization, and sweeping down on the annoying host of political lights like the Macedonian phalanx of old. In the emergency we heartily favor an iron- of Tony Lumpkins' to get me in ill-repute but an emulation of the roistering cheer of the Mermaid, whose juicy chat and familiar fellowship, inspired by "Rare Ben's" sweet Canary, could be rebuked by no less quiet a spirit than Milton which scene in With The Poets Canon Farrar invokes.

This is an easy little chat, a perfectly happy-go-lucky confab with a devoted circle of my "friends of the noble touch," not shut in by ourselves to esoteric frolics, but hobnobbing together genially and open-heartedly in the midst of the merry din. Let those who look herein for other gossip betake themselves elsewheres we warn them, after the illustrious antecedent of Fielding in Tom Jones, just what to expect and hope, with Beaumarchais, that they may encounter it in the congenial spirit. But a truce to parley, and on with a bout to tickle the heart of Gargantua Let us be merry while the frosty stars wink in the zenith, and while yet the red hub of the Day rolls through the shadows of Styx Horace knew good Falernian in the amphone and Anacreon dances with Bacchus and Cupid I am with child for the frolic. What ho, my Mesopotamians, my Babylonians, as Simon Eyre, the mad shoemaker, says, "aw.ay with your pishery-pashery, your pols and your edipols "A pound of care pays not a dram of debt. Hum, let's be merry whiles we are young old age, sack and sugar will steal upon us, ere we be aware." Let the bottles bleed A beaker, Ganymede, brimming with nectar, and a souse for that gray cat, Care, in the bowl II.

Leaf tie Freond Waes Hailf we greet thee. Flamingo, wassail And thou, 'Frisco, and thou, Wicks, and Edkins, and Emery, "Hail to thee, blithe spirit Cherished friends all, gay wags, dainty Ariels, boon Patrocluses our jolly Pantagruelian cronies we pledge you, supernaculum, in a merry bumper of the Ancient Order We have come back to the delicious Table Round to sit again at your elbow and break Queen's-Drops with you. Long life to the "reddish-long-billed-stork-like-scrank-legged fowls, called Flamingoes," and safety from the bewhiskered Terror who lurks i' th Hall o' nights And you happy old friends of sunsets agone, Banqueters at Columbus, Frolickers at Milwaukee, "Moonshine Revelers" at Boston on the Quincy House Top Floor, the sweet stars shed glad influence upon you Deep in our heart of heart nestle golden memories of you all, and the recollections of our halcyon fellowship are a full honey-bag to us. But the fossils of Amateurdom often return from their dreamland of Avalon, as it is fabled of Olger the Dane and almost over the unquiet tomb of each might be written the epitaph of King Arthur Hie JACET ARTHURUS REX QUONDAM REXQUE FUTURUS. We not only gaze from the battlements of Troy on.