A disturbing thought comes. “If there were an earthquake in San Francisco you’d feel the tremor here. If there were an earthquake in the West the river might suddenly flow over us.” We listened, we tried to sense the sleeping world, the ball on which we were lying. How still, how peaceful it was! Not a tremor, not a quiver from beneath us! Old earth slept the perfect sleep of a child. We too could sleep that way, and presently some one spoke but the others did not reply, did not dare. One was left speaking and the other was asleep. All became still and quiet in the temple. The candles were still burning. But the priest had gone. It was night, and the Spirit reigned in serenity. And the candles were still burning. [Illustration] _A tiny spark was born to-day; It said good-b’ye to yesterday. It carried up a tiny light, Said good-day and then good-night. “Good-morrow!” said the tiny spark, But ere the morrow came ’twas dark. So that’s the best that he can do, In his own time say “How d’ye do.”_ [Illustration: LINCOLN THE STAR OF THE EAST BECOMES THE STAR OF THE WEST] XXXII. THE STAR OF SPRINGFIELD NEXT day, tramping to Flat Top Mountain, we talked of Springfield and Abraham Lincoln. We were in stately forests, and the ancient mould under the feet silenced our steps. We walked slowly, and stopped to pick the big black huckleberries, paused to climb over stricken trees, paused to eat the raspberries from the undergrowth of raspberry bushes. “I’d like you to think of Lincoln as a poor man,” said Vachel, “an eccentric--laughed at, sneered at a great deal, entirely underestimated, a man who was a mystic, who believed in dreams and presentiments and told many dreams to his Cabinet with great gravity. Politicians want to see in him a conventional great man now, but in his life-time he was called eccentric. He was as much laughed at as Johnny Appleseed. But if a man is called eccentric in this country, or much laughed at, you’ll often find he was a mystic or a genius of some kind.” One of Vachel’s alternative ideas for a tramp was to do a Springfield star, making the city our centre to radiate outward, or, could I say, walk radiantly outward, in one direction, then in another, all round the compass. “As you went to Bethlehem with the Russian pilgrims so you could pilgrimage to our Bethlehem,” said he, “see our star.” People from all parts of the world come to Springfield to see the Lincoln home, to visit Salem and the grave of Anne Rutledge, to salute Lincoln’s grave. They do so, not because they are told to do so, or because there are organised tours, but because the heart moves them to it.