And yet my lady, this evening, becomes a thing not quite of this earth, a spirit, yet a sower in earthly fields. I whisper: “Lady Avanel, Miss Fantastic, while the star chimes are ringing another new tune, what are you sowing from your close-woven willow basket so full of seed?” The lady speaks with the voice of the wind:—“I am sowing the torturing thistle of dreams. Some men do not see this city as it is, because they have walked in easy and stupid ways. They have never walked, as we do this evening, while the Thistle of Dreams comes up. We see it springing from the ground in an instant. It will go in an hour. But if we touch it we are blessed and tormented forever by newer and newer dreams. And at last our eyes will see this city as it is, a weed patch indeed, but of fancies. And more than a weed patch of fancies,—a forest, but of gigantic dreams. “The men who can see the dreams build the patterns into visible forms, and then we have the Sunset Towers, and the Truth Tower, and the Street of Past History, and the rest. “Then I walk past these buildings and sow new thistle-down and thistles, and they penetrate the very concrete of the sidewalk, splitting it for their roots. Then younger men and women are stung with new visions, that make the Sunset Towers seem commonplace, and all but the Springfield Flag, the Star Spangled Banner, and the World Flag, dim things.” The Thistle of Dreams is growing around Avanel as she speaks. It looks like a gigantic fleur de lis, but from it comes endless silk as though from the pods of the milkweed. She says of that silk: “It is full of thorns sharper than Cupid’s arrows, more transforming than any drug from Asia. They work their way to many a heart and brain. When the young citizens are tormented by these they will build things greater than Springfield has yet looked upon, people’s palaces, as yet without a name.” “And who are you, Lady Avanel, and by what authority do you speak?” “I am only the breath of the prairie, I am only the West-going Heart, and by that authority I speak to you, and by that authority I sow the thistle.” “Lady Avanel, Miss Fantastic, while the star chimes are ringing another new tune, what are you sowing from your close woven willow basket, so full of seed?” “I am sowing the appleseeds of Johnny Appleseed and Hunter Kelly and the Acorns of Rabbi Terence Ezekiel and the seeds of the Golden Rain Tree of New Harmony. But they are now breathed on by the winds of chaos and their glory comes suddenly.”