“I remember the Halloween of 2018, and the next few days, as no other period in my life. I was in the Cathedral all the night, praying before the Image of St. Scribe of the Shrines. And toward morning it took on the appearance of breathing human flesh, but was Hunter Kelly of long ago, in the hunter’s cap and deerskin dress, such as he wore when he came to Illinois two centuries ago.” And so Hunter Kelly, St. Scribe of the Shrines, made me forget all else, telling me stories of the tomorrow of Illinois and giving clear prophecies of the tomorrow of the Cathedral, in the city and the nation and the world. He spoke of saints of the pattern of Abraham Lincoln, and Johnny Appleseed, foreordained to live and breathe beneath our Cathedral roof, before the ever living presence on the altar. Then he gave me the joy of confession, and seemed to be St. Scribe, the master of my youth. Then all was darkness and sleep. “In the early morning I woke from my trance and found myself lying on the floor of the Cathedral. The Image of Hunter Kelly-St. Scribe was gone from the niche. “In the late morning, when I found myself reading his Golden Book to the people, it seemed as though I had known its every word for infinite years. “I read on and on. When I closed the book and dismissed the people, they went out singing through the streets ‘Springfield Awake, Springfield Aflame.’ “As I stood alone in the church, a vision of the war came to me. “The angel of the Cathedral came down from the carved niche near the roof. By many signs she was, indeed, the angel of Illinois. The stone was transformed into a presence, delicate as the milkweed silk, ruddy as the sunrise. Her hair was the hue of red corn. Her wind blown mantle was the color of ripe wheat. Her wings were like those of the white eagle. Her eyes were dark as the deep-digged mine. Her smile was the beginning of visions. “Circling her temple was an opalescent crown, twenty white stars, with the twenty-first over the forehead, with the red blood of Hunter Kelly in the heart’s core of it. “Above her head appeared a great hand, swinging a censer through the roof and walls of the building. The Angel of the Cathedral said to me, as she stood beside me:—‘This is the Censer of Change. A great change is coming to Illinois and the Capital of Illinois.’ “The smoke poured out and filled the streets. It penetrated every grove of Springfield. It beat in the blood of every living creature. “The Angel of Illinois said:—‘This is the Incense of Civic Genius. The city shall be barren no longer but bring forth.’ “Then through the roof, as though there were a censer higher than the first, clouds of many colors descended. These became gorgeous cloud-winged children in wonderful, gleaming silks, flying through the walls. And in the same stream Gothic grotesques walked and crawled down the aisles and out into the streets, all singing: ‘Springfield Awake, Springfield Aflame.’