fellows in the Boy's Town
seemed to be Whigs. There must have been some Locofoco boys, of course,
for my boy and his friends used to advance, on their side, the position
that

"Democrats
Eat dead rats!"

The counter-argument that

"Whigs
Eat dead pigs!"

had no force in a pork-raising country like that; but it was urged, and
there must have been Democratic boys to urge it. Still, they must have
been few in number, or else my boy did not know them. At any rate, they
had no club, and the Whig boys always had a club. They had a Henry Clay
Club in 1844, and they had Buckeye Clubs whenever there was an election
for governor, and they had clubs at every exciting town or county or
district election. The business of a Whig club among the boys was to
raise ash flag-poles, in honor of Henry Clay's home at Ashland, and to
learn the Whig songs and go about singing them. You had to have a wagon,
too, and some of the club pulled while the others rode; it could be such
a wagon as you went walnutting with; and you had to wear strands of
buckeyes round your neck. Then you were a real Whig boy, and you had a
right to throw fire-balls and roll tar-barrels for the bonfires on
election nights.

I do not know why there should have been so many empty tar-barrels in
the Boy's Town, or what they used so much tar for; but there were
barrels enough to celebrate all the Whig victories that the boys ever
heard of, and more, too; the boys did not always wait for the victories,
but celebrated every election with bonfires, in the faith that it would
turn out right.

Maybe the boys nowadays do not throw fire-balls, or know about them.
They were made of cotton rags wound tight and sewed, and then soaked in
turpentine. When a ball was lighted a boy caught it quickly up, and
threw it, and it made a splendid streaming blaze through the air, and a
thrilling whir as it flew. A boy had to be very nimble not to get
burned, and a great many boys dropped the ball for every boy that threw
it. I am not ready to say why these fire-balls did not set the Boy's
Town on fire, and burn it down, but I know they never did. There was no
law against them, and the boys were never disturbed in throwing them,
any more than they were in building bonfires; and this shows, as much as
anything, what a glorious town that was for boys. The way they used to
build their bonfires was to set one tar-barrel on top of another, as
high as