“The great moment,” Pleydon said again, in a vibrant tone. “But you know nothing of all this,” he directly addressed Linda. “Neither, probably, will you have heard of Simon Downige. He was born at Cottarsport, in Massachusetts, about eighteen forty; and, after--in the support of his hatred of any slavery--he fought through the Civil War, he came home and found that his town stifled him. He didn't marry at once, as so many returning soldiers did; instead he was wedded to a vision of freedom, freedom of opinion, of spirit, worship--any kind of spaciousness whatever. And, in the pursuit of that, he went West. “He told them that he was going to find--but found was the word--a place where men could live together in a purity of motives and air. No more, you understand; he hadn't a personal fanatical belief to exploit and attract the hysteria of women and insufficient men. He was not a pathological messiah; but only Simon Downige, an individual who couldn't comfortably breathe the lies and injustice and hypocrisy of the ordinary community. No doubt he was unbalanced--his sensitiveness to a universal condition would prove that. Normally people remain undisturbed by such trivialities. If they didn't an end would come to one or the other, the lies or the world. “He traveled part way in a Conestoga wagon--a flight out of Egypt; they were common then, slow canvas-covered processions with entire families drawn by the mysterious magnetism of the West. Then, leaving even such wayfarers, he walked, alone, until he came on a meadow by a little river and a grove of trees, probably cottonwoods.... That was Simon Downige, and that, too, was Hesperia. Yes, he was unbalanced--the old Greek name for beautiful lands. It is a city now, successful and corruptly administered--what always happens to such visions. “It is necessary, Linda, as I've always told you, to understand the whole motive behind a creation in permanent form. A son of Simon's--yes, he finally married--a unique and very rich character, wife dead and no children, commissioned a monument to the founder of Hesperia, in Ohio, and of his fortune. “They even have a civic body for the control of public building; and they came East to approve my statue, or rather the clay sketch for it. They were very solemn, and one, himself a sculptor, a graduate of the Beaux Arts, ran a suggestive thumb over Simon and did incredible damage. But, after a great deal of hesitation, and a description from the sculptor of what he thought excellently appropriate for such magnificence, they accepted my study. The present Downige, really--though I understand there is another pretentious branch in Hesperia--bullied them into it. He cursed the Beaux-Arts graduate with the most brutal and satisfactory freedom--the tyranny of his money; the crown, you see, of Simon's hope.”