“The engines will rush back, bringing skilled mechanics, wise industrial statesmen, and world leaders in art for little Springfield, down here in Egypt. Such people are held in infinitely higher honor here than in the Chicago that made them. All men and women seem to have increased in vanity in this year 2018, and this is a highly commendable change. I rejoice that citizens of the United States now live upon honor and its power more than upon the desire for mere currency. So the corn-dragons will always be robbing Chicago, America’s commercial capital, of her best. People will keep coming here for much smaller salaries and for more passionate praise. [Applause!] “I hope that the whizzing and whistling of these engines, henceforth more musical than of old, will be the war cry of our whole Egyptian village and countryside. I hope that for generation after generation many dragons of this breed will whirl by, and many another ploughboy, sighting them through the cornfields, will not only catch the original vision of Eric Hedder, but new untamed dreams of art and glory and creation will be engendered on such days. “Without haste, without rest, our rewards and appreciations pay for our creations. Let the young Egyptian patriot see these dragons as big brothers that sweep through the high growing corn armies, messengers flying from county to county, crying in the trumpet glory of their silver voices, that art and life are married in the region of the capital.” [Great Applause!] Avanel admits that her father had to roar in this case, for the crowd was large, and, speaking from a station platform in the open air, the loudest man cannot be heard with traffic going by and newsboys selling extras about the event before it happens. We walk just a little south along the viaduct on Tenth from the great New Union Depot to a most familiar and ancient structure, a kind of rough memorial shrine, which was once the station whence the Lincoln presidential train left for Washington and where Lincoln gave his parting word to the City of Springfield. Outside the door of the museum, Avanel and I re-read Lincoln’s famous farewell to his fellow citizens, cast in bronze and set up for a tablet long ago. Then, being in the mood of reminiscence, we walk past the Lincoln residence and Avanel begins to compare Lincoln to Jesus and speak of him as the greatest person sent to men since Jesus. And I think the sibyl has at last permanently emerged and that my companion is finally with me.