captured some of them and took them back to Chilepepperland and sold them to plantation owners in the southern part of Chilepepperland …"

"Oh, come on!" said Nibbles, who had been very silent all this time.
"You can't sell people."

"In those days you could," Tweaty responded. "At least, according to the green chilepeppers I talked to. They not only sold the people they captured as slaves, but they went back again and again to capture more green chilepeppers and sold them, too. And by the way, a lot of the green chilepeppers died in the terrible voyage en route."

"But how could the leaders of the yellow chilepeppers allow this to happen?" asked Ozma. "I would never allow even an unkind remark to pass between them if I were their leader. And I would have made the yellow chilepeppers take the green chilepeppers back to their own people immediately."

"Well, as a matter of fact," continued Tweaty, "the yellow chilepeppers' leader lived in the north, and he thought very poorly of this arrangement. A lot of other people agreed with him, and he abolished slavery forever from the land. But it caused the yellow chilepeppers to fight among themselves and, to this day, some yellow chilepeppers still do not consider the green chilepeppers to be equal in status to themselves—and can be quite discriminating in their treatment of them. That is, when they can get away with it. They even confine them economically and socially to areas that are less desirable to live. Quite naturally, this causes great resentment among many of the green chilepeppers and sometimes their anger is unleashed in unfortunate ways. This in turn causes an even greater chasm between the two groups."

"How terrible!" Elephant said. "Chilepepperland sounds like a horrible place to live! I hope I never even have to visit there."

"It sounds to me," said Ozma, "that if every single chilepepper who lives in Chilepepperland really wanted to, they could live in Peace and Love and Harmony alongside each other forever and ever. And then it would be a perfectly wonderful place to live."

"The problem as I see it," said Hootsey, looking as wise as he could, "is that for every chilepepper of whatever color whose heart is filled with love and kindness for his fellows, there are probably several who cannot generate those feelings within themselves. So I predict that the unfortunate state of affairs in that dark land will continue for quite some time to come. It's a very negative prognosis, I know. But the accumulated wisdom I have acquired over many years tells me that this is so."

"I know one thing," said Lisa. "The people who live in the land where Dorothy comes from are much too intelligent to allow such foolishness to exist there."

The other members of the little group turned to each other knowingly, and slowly shook their heads. For they knew that the unfortunate fact of the matter was that the land where Dorothy came from had had a similar history. In fact, even as I write these words, there are people in the mortal lands who have lost their homes and all of their worldly possessions, and many, their lives, simply because they had the misfortune to be born different in some way than their neighbors.

Everyone became very quiet as he assimilated all that had been said. Ozma spoke first. "I would like to read, if I may, a poem from a little book given to me by a dear friend. I was reminded of this poem when Tweaty spoke of the difficulties the green chilepepper people encountered. The poem was written by a mortal human named William Blake. It is called The Little Black Boy."

     _My mother bore me in the southern wild
     And I am black, but O my soul is white
     White as an angel is the English child
     But I am black, as if bereaved of light.

     My mother taught me underneath a tree,
     And, sitting down before the heat of the day,
     She took me on her lap and kissed me,
     And, pointing to the East, began to say:

     "Look on the rising sun: there God does live,
     And gives His light, and gives His heat away,
     And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive
     Comfort in the morning, joy in the noonday.

     "And we are put on Earth a little space
     That we may learn to bear the beams of love;
     And these black bodies and this sunburnt face
     Are but a cloud, and like a shady grove.

     "For, when our souls have learned the heat to bear,
     The cloud will vanish, we shall hear His voice,
     Saying, 'Come out from the grove, my love and care,
     And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice.'"

     Thus did my mother say, and kissed me,
     And thus I say to the little English boy.
     When I from black, and he from white cloud free.
     And round the tent of God like lambs we joy,

     I'll shade him from the heat 'til he can bear
     To lean in joy upon our Father's knee;
     And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair,
     And be like him, and he will then love me._

By the time Ozma had read the last line, tears were streaming down everyone's face.

"That is the most beautiful poem I have ever heard…" Elephant sobbed, as Tweaty dabbed his eyes with a tailfeather, "…and so very sad that it will take so long for True Love to exist between all peoples. Only when they realize that in the ultimate sense there is no difference between them."

The story of the chilepeppers and the poem by William Blake left everyone in a very somber mood. But Time was not standing still, and you can be sure that that mean-spirited old spider-monster was not letting any grass grow under his feet. Even now he was no doubt growing stronger by the minute by sucking strength and courage out of any victim who had been unfortunate enough to be caught in his deadly web.

"We must be on our way," Ozma said, shivering slightly. "Elephant, why don't we all ride on you, and we'll talk as we go along and plan our strategy."

"Good idea," Elephant answered, picking Ozma up again.

Meanwhile, Tweaty and the owls flew up and perched on Elephant's head. Elephant then lowered his trunk to allow Nibbles to jump aboard and be lifted up behind Ozma.

"Okay, every one!" shouted Elephant as he raised his trunk high in the air and let out a great trump which just about blew everyone off his back. He then proceeded to waddle down the road making trumping sounds that sounded suspiciously like a trombone playing the bass part to When the Saints go marching in. In fact, pretty soon everyone was singing along—

     Oh when the saints
     Go mar chin' in.
     When the saints go marchin' in.
     Lord, I want to be in that number,
     When the saints go marchin' in…

[Illustration: Sniffer and Stinkfoot arguing.]