The Abracadabra Boys
The abracadabra boys—have they been in the stacks and cloisters?
Have they picked up languages for throwing into chow mein
poems?
Have they been to a sea of jargons and brought back jargons? Their
salutations go: Who cometh? and, It ith I cometh.
They know postures from impostures, pistils from pustules, to hear
them tell it. They foregather and make pitty pat with each other
in Latin and in their private pig Latin, very ofay.
They give with passwords. “Who cometh?” “A kumquat cometh.”
“And how cometh the kumquat?” “On an abbadabba, ancient
and honorable sire, ever and ever on an abbadabba.”
Do they have fun? Sure—their fun is being what they are, like our
fun is being what we are—only they are more sorry for us being
what we are than we are for them being what they are.
Pointing at you, at us, at the rabble, they sigh and say, these abraca
dabra boys, “They lack jargons. They fail to distinguish between
pustules and pistils. They knoweth not how the kumquat cometh.”