ine," and he read
it solemnly and with emphasis:

"'Yankee Doodle came to town,
A-riding on a pony.
He stuck a feather in his cap
And called it macaroni.'

"Which reading is correct?" he asked of Cleary.

"I'm sure I don't know," said Cleary, laughing.

"How careless you are of your country's literature! In Porsslania we
would carefully guard the sayings of our ancestors and preserve them
from alteration. You have what you call the 'higher criticism.' You
should direct it to the correction of this most important poem. I have
studied the matter as carefully and accurately as a foreigner can, and
I am satisfied that my version is the most authentic. Come now, let us
study it. Take the first two lines:

"'Yankee Doodle came to town
A-riding on a pony.'

"There is nothing difficult in that. You may say that the name is a
strange one, and I admit that 'Doodle' is a curious surname, but 'Yang
Kee' is a perfectly reasonable one from a Porsslanese point of view,
and leads me to suppose that the wisdom contained in this poem came
originally from our wise men. Perhaps the name is put there as an
indication of the fact. However, let us accept the name. The hero came
to town riding on a pony. That was a very sensible thing to do.
Remember that those lines were written long before the discovery of
railways or tram-cars or bicycles or automobiles. You may say that he
might have taken a carriage or one of your buggies, but you forget that
the roads were exceedingly bad in those days, as bad as our roads near
the Imperial City, and it would have been dangerous perhaps to attempt
the journey in a vehicle of any kind. In riding to town on a pony,
then, he was acting like a rational man. But let us read the rest of
the verse:

"'He stuck a feather in his cap
And called it macaroni.'

"For some reason or other which is not revealed, he puts a feather in
his cap, and immediately he begins to act irrationally and to use
language so absurd that the reading itself has become doubtful. What is
the meaning of this? A man whose conduct has always been reasonable and
unexceptionable, suddenly adopts the language of a lunatic. What does
it mean? You have sung this verse for a century and more, and you have
never taken the trouble to seek for the meaning."

Sam and Cleary did not attempt to defend their neglect.

"It is clear to me," proceeded the philos