Springfield (Ill.) -- Fiction; Springfield (Ill.) -- In literature; Utopias in literature
The negress who sees prophetic visions is easily persuaded to add her
testimony about the book. Her name in 2018 is Mary Timmons, and she is
nicknamed “Pious Mary.” She is most voluble concerning the wonders of
the new time. But to the matter of the book at once. She finds herself
in her church, in the place where the Baptist Evangelical chapel stood a
century before. And it is still called the “Baptist Evangelical.” The
house of worship is now gorgeous with curious jungle-mooded ornaments,
pillars which are so carved as to seem moss-hung and vine-wound. It is
as though we were in the shade of things too high for man. All this
house of worship has been evolved by her cousin, the great architect
John Emis, who is also a member of this congregation, and a powerful
exhorter among his own people, despite all his world fame among paler
races. It is in the midst of his designs she moves, on this great day.
With pentecostal power her people are singing “Swing Low, Sweet
Chariot.” While the faces are uplifted, the book of air, the book that
gleams with spiritual gold, flies in through the walls as though they
were but shadows. There is a mighty glory shout from the congregation.
It is, according to Mary Timmons, answered by music from “the highest
sanctorium of the meridian sky.” There are twenty heavenly doves soaring
in a circle around the book. Outside of them is a circle of robins. All
these birds fly through the walls and away, while the book settles upon
the reading desk. The wings do not fade, but cover the pulpit with
plumes of azure, plumes of ebony, peacock feathers, each with three
eyes, and long feathery golden threads that are spreading and scattering
like loose silk. Yet these things seem but as clouds spun by necromancy
and as words of the angels made visible.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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