e is death. At the base of the hill there flows, in
constant hubbub, a great up-and-down artery of street, repeating
itself, mile after mile, in terms of the butcher, the baker, and the
"every-other-corner drug-store of a million dollar corporation". Housewives
with perambulators and oil-cloth shopping bags. Children on rollerskates.
The din of small tradesmen and the humdrum of every city block where the
homes remain unbearded all summer and every wife is on haggling terms with
the purveyor of her evening roundsteak and mess of rutabaga.

Then there is the soap-box provender, too, sure of a crowd, offering creed,
propaganda, patent medicine, and politics. It is the pulpit of the reformer
and the housetop of the fanatic, this soapbox. From it the voice to the
city is often a pious one, an impious one, and almost always a raucous one.
Luther and Sophocles, and even a Citizen of Nazareth made of the four winds
of the street corner the walls of a temple of wisdom. What more fitting
acropolis for freedom of speech than the great out-of-doors!

Turning from the incline of cross-street into this petty Baghdad of
the petty wise, the voice of the street corner lifted itself above
the inarticulate din of the thoroughfare. A youth, thewed like an ox,
surmounted on a stack of three self provided canned-goods boxes, his
in-at-the-waist silhouette thrown out against a sky that was almost ready
to break out in stars; a crowd tightening about him.

"It's a soldier boy talkin', Gert."

"If it ain't!" They tiptoed at the fringe of the circle, heads back.

"Look, Gert, he's a lieutenant; he's got a shoulder-bar. And those four
down there holding the flags are just privates. You can always tell a
lieutenant by the bar."

"Uh-huh."

"Say, them boys do stack up some for Uncle Sam."

"'Shh-h-h, Jimmie!"

"I'm here to tell you that them boys stack up some."

A banner stiffened out in the breeze, Mr. Batch reading: "Enlist before you
are drafted. Last chance to beat the draft. Prove your patriotism. Enlist
now! Your country calls!"

"Come on," said Mr. Batch.

"Wait. I want to hear what he's saying."

"... there's not a man here before me can afford to shirk his duty to his
country. The slacker can't get along without his country, but his country
can very easily get along without him."

Cheers.

"The poor exemption boobs are already running for doctors' certificates and
marriage licenses, but even if they get by with it--and