Everywhere South of Mason and Dixon’s line they say that Grant surrendered to Lee. It is in every southern school book. When we look into history we are made dizzy by cloud and flame. And we shall still be partizans in the highest Heaven. There are many earthly languages. There are many heavenly languages. There are many blazing, blinding tomorrows. But they all lead to the same glorious tomorrow at last. The Prognosticators are a dithyrambic, chanting, improvising howling dervish set, with a certain sense of humor among all these blinding lights, which is but to say they have elasticity of soul and mind. Many of the Michael Clan of Springfield, of 1920, returned soldiers, Red Cross nurses, and other workers, saw kindred visions of the Flying Book of Springfield blazing above the trenches at midnight for their comfort, while voices in the air sang them stories of home. Reader, in your town many like these are brooding alone over unaccountable vistas of the future of their city, that have come to them in battle or by the fireside or in the storm. They have found themselves standing momently at cross streets of vision, before they felt their hearts to be as dust again. Call them together. Blow ashes into flame. Start a brotherhood of your own. Live in the New City that is revealed to you, as we are living in our City and in the streets of our Tomorrow. CHAPTER V I ENTER INTO THE NEW SPRINGFIELD OF 2018. I AM SNUBBED BY AVANEL, SHE RELENTS, SHOWING ME MANY PANORAMAS OF NEW SPRINGFIELD. WE CONFESS TO HAVING THE SAME DREAM OF DEVIL’S GOLD. But it is not after the noble manner of these others that I enter at last into the vision of 2018. There is deep darkness, and time passing by without end, and shade. There is the fear of the moles that will not leave me alone, who make nests of alien dust, beneath my ribs. And my bones crumble through the century, like last year’s autumn leaves. Then there is, alternating with drouth, bitter frost. And roots wrap my heart and brain. And there is sleep. Then a galloping and gay shrieking, away on the road, to the East of Oak Ridge! And though I am six feet beneath the ground the eyes of the soul are given me. I see wonderful young horsewomen out on that Great Northwest Road and the ancient clay between me and that cavalcade turns to air and to light. And I am asking myself as the Girl Leader goes by like a meteor: “Am I coming up again through the earth as weed or flame or man? If I rise from this grave, I am coming but to praise her, if I may.”