The Helena independent. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1875-1943, 1890-04-28
WHO Is HEP

In what mystic recesses does. he hide him
self, or under what commonplace alias does
he veil himself, this great high priest of
boyish games? Is he some schoolboy, sage
beyond his years, with careworn face and
shoulders prematurely bent beneath the
vast responsibilities entrusted and handed
cipated predecessor now budding forth in
high collars, derby hat, cigarette and faint
est shade of down on the upper lip?
Or is he some snowy-haired old fellow
with cheeks as rudy as a winter apple, the
corners of whose eyes twinkle and ripple
into smiles, whose heart has never grown
old in spite of long acquaintance with the
world, its shams and its disappointments?
One of the gentler sex it cannot be; other
wise, marbles and torn stockings, football
and hacked shins, stills and peeled noses
would all long ago have passed into the
limbo of things forgotten.
And yet some one there must be, some
one whose fat is as the laws of the Modes
and Persians of old; some He that must be
obeyed' by the grand army of boys all over
the world some one who has but to whis-
per ''Let whip-tops PREVAIL" and, 10! within
the space of twelve hours will every boy
under the bright heaven sally forth with
all proper equipment for the fulfillment of
the behest. The acquisition may have in
volved the sacrifice of all that boy holds
most dear, his boosted leadership in the
play. ground, his vested right of ruling at
pleasure his sisters and smaller brothers,
his determination never, never to kiss his
mother before company, and never again
to 60 to bed before 10 O'Clock; it may have
meant the disposal at a prodigious loss of
some foreign postage stamps, once the
pride of his album, the Joy of his life, the
envy of every school-mate; it may have re-
quired hours of microscopic research and
footsore travel in dusty back yards in quest
of empty beer bottles for the purposes of
retail trade, and perilous handbreadth es-
capes from irate housewives with eXagger-
ated notions of meum and tuum; it may,
alas for the hard luck that besets boy,
have even necessitated an infringement of
the decalogue. All this and much more it
| may have meant, but what matters it?
Hath not the word gone forth, perish the
craven that would desert his chief!
And again how are these mystical DEGREES
proclaimed? How does this all
powerful autocrat, miehtier than
he of Russia, communicate his
will to his obedient subjects? Are the
birds of the air or tho breezes of spring hi,
messengers? To the adult mind this is
perhaps, the more veritable mystery of the
two. Did he, like ourselves, use the mail
the telegraph or the telephone, depend upol
it We should have been at the bottom of tn,
mystery long ago. A wonderful secret ser
vice, too, the one at his command! He ha
but to signify his pleasure, and, look you
ere the earth can make one rotation on it,
axis, his orders are in full effect alike in tn
old world and the new. What would no
the dynamite haunted ruler of all the Rus
sias give for the secret of such a rule a
this, even to the half of his kingdom? IL
vain may the historian search the truthful
/ records of this long-lived dynasty for ON.
t single breath of discomfort, one isolated
, uprising against authority.
! 1t is absurd to seek a solution of the mys
terry in memory: the school boy is incapabl,
of the much slighter feat of rememberin.
what he did this day last year, unless. per
haps, that day washis birthday; and then h
: recalls no more than vision Of cake and, !
: may be, some subsequent discomfort in tn
: region below his heart. Tradition. toe