The little school teacher finds herself reborn in 2018 as head of the three-color printing department of the school where she teaches. In the reincarnation she bears the name of Josephine Windom. She stands helpless when a Rock and Kopensky mob, and children of Doctor Mayo Sims seize the winged volume from the altar of St. Friend, apparently against its will, like a hundred men binding an angel. Near the market house between Fourth and Fifth on Monroe they pile firewood upon the book. They pour on oil. They light the pyre. All is turned to ashes. Later a band of Municipal University rescuers arrives. They are led by her assistant in the color printing department, Horace Andrews. Slowly as though greeting this band the flames renew themselves, and take form. There is the book again, but four times as large, with wings, binding, leaves, and letters of fire. Then suddenly it is flying above the city. Its covers are of the iridescence of a shell, with a golden shimmering. The wings are music making. The book is a friend of men. It is disposed to descend to its friends. It is carried in flying and fluttering state to the three-color printing department of the school, where hundreds of rainbow replicas of the pages are made, though not on this earth can replicas of the wings be made. And while the book is within the four walls, the school becomes a place of fairyland. Every cottage has its own copy of the volume in time. Edition after edition goes out, first from the school, then from the greater, more dazzling printing presses of the University, to the scholars and artists of Europe and Asia, through their colleagues who are attending the World’s Fair of the University of Springfield. But the book itself, having once been copied in the printing room there, flies around the Truth Tower, the center of town; it goes up in higher and wider circles. At last it is seen, a star among the stars. Meanwhile the transfiguration of the city begins. The future plays a curious trick with our artist friend, the valiant and patriotic American who sent forth all his sons against the Germans. He is astonished to find himself reborn a pacifist, Anno Domini, 2018. And there are other sad changes. He sees himself in a mirror as a long-haired creature, a ragged libel of the William Cullen Bryant type, with similar features, but dressed in ready made garments, and with much food spilled down the front of his vest. His nickname in 2018 is “Old Sparrow Short,” because at that time the sparrow is his favorite bird, and because he is tall. This increased height is the only concession to his vanity in the revelation, for in 1920 he has been obliged to stand on his toes over and over, to give any impression of height.