HOW I HAPPENED TO WRITE “OTHER WORLDS.”
’Twas evening. I was sitting in my parlor alone in the home, not a soul was near.
A strike was in full blast and had been for a year.
Lives had been lost and mourners would weep
As funerals passed slowly down the street.
Watching at the window as a procession passed,
Mentally I asked the question: how long O God! how long shall this thing last?
Is the Idol of the Nation—aye, the Idol of the earth—
That thing, that is called money;—oh—is it of greater worth
Than the creatures thou hast created?
Not knowing I had uttered a prayer, in the fullness of my heart
I sat in the gloaming, and in time it became quite dark.
I was resting—sitting passive—not even trying to think,
When an angel stood before me! Perhaps ’twas—a dream; who knows?
Who can tell when a dream commences or when we doze,
Or when imagination creates a thing; if practical, why need we care?
To me it was a vision and the angel was most fair,
As she pointed to the stars in the heavens, shining there:
“They too, are worlds,” she whispered, “struggling to the light,
Gaining wisdom by experience and power by their might.
Go write and tell the world about them and how they won:
When powers and principalities seemed greater than the sun.
This monster called ‘money,’ that all love so well;
Has opened wide the very floodgates of hell,
Until you have a toiling, struggling mass called humanity.
Go, now, write the story; I bid you make haste
For your homes are menaced! Your country will be laid waste
By the Trusts who weave webs, as a spider to catch flies;
The Nation may be throttled until it dies.”