Springfield (Ill.) -- Fiction; Springfield (Ill.) -- In literature; Utopias in literature
According to the model, Joseph Bartholdi, in his reincarnation, has shod
the horses of many a governor of Illinois and President of the United
States, and President of the World Government. This husky, distinguished
democracy combines with the prestige of his precocious book to make him
the most distinguished representative of the teeming 2018 Middle West,
in the World Government. He champions there the ceremonies and honors
due the International Flag with the loyalty to what they like and a
sense of the depths of pageantry, that has distinguished the Michael
following from the beginning. Portia, the Singing Aviator, has in the
generation of the Mystic Year, written the local song about “The
Patchwork Flag of Michael and the World.” And she calls it in the same
song: “Joseph’s Coat of Many Colors” or “The Flag of Joseph’s Coat” in
allusion to his fashion of almost draping it around him, with the Star
Spangled Banner, when he is speaking on high occasions, on international
issues.
Instead of an exquisite, he is lean, wiry, with a hooked and hatchet
face, burned, cooked, in the forge. He finds he has the habit of
pointing his long, skinny fingers at the enemy he denounces. He finds
that, like his progenitor, “The Iron Gentleman,” he has a record of
putting things through with sheer fury when there is no other weapon
handy.
He tells the Prognosticator’s Club, that, through the century, the flag
with the six hammers and the six anvils has been smeared by renegades.
But the proud truth-speaking custom has tortured the whole clan till
some one has risen to confess the sins of the name, and start new.
And the Michaels have been hated off and on for a whole century because
of these things, and because they were always hating some one, even
without cause. They were apt to be jealous of other vigorous citizens,
considering themselves the sole saviors of the principle of defiant
democracy. But all the century the leading Michaels have seemed to be
saying: “A town well hammered into shape is better than fortune or
fame.” Few Michaels were guilty of living a private and secluded
existence.
Few maidens were crowned with lovelier hair or carried themselves with
finer mien than the granddaughters and great granddaughters of the “Iron
Gentleman.” The stock has gone on in beauty and strength through the
vision of a century. Yet in 2018 it seems that the scepter is just a
little departing from the younger generation. It is not that they are
ousted from public office. The fearless voice of a Michael always counts
most as a private citizen, and, whenever Joseph Bartholdi Michael, the
Second, returns from The World Government, he takes his place in the
Horse Shoe Brotherhood as a private in the ranks beside his son Joseph
Bartholdi, the Third, and it is their full intention, according to
hereditary political habit, to ride against Singapore, when the time is
ripe, as privates in the ranks.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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