What? A Crown of Radiance arisen there. A solemn bell tolls forth; streams of light are shed around in spectrum sparks; the river banks are deserted; the towers tenantless, as each citizen hastens to the inner aisles of verdure depths, where issues shadowed fire.
I keep pace with Savant, whom first I see and reach with him an inner balcony that is endless in curving ring each side, making amphitheater around the city. The center is a great open rotunda, of fields, miles broad, of shaking ice. A flame of gold supplying the Crown above ascends out of a round cavernous crater in the center.
Savant seats himself on a raised broad platform, commanding a view of the whole scene. I unconsciously sit beside him. Beneath our feet I see a rug of “hel”iotrope. (Note. The quotation marks in the flowers give a double meaning. A “hel” meaning heel on the rug.) A hedge of “wall”flower hems us in from a row of poplar tree columns. Before us on a table is spread a set of “China” asters under a canopy of blue iris (flag). As Canterbury “bells” ring forth, we begin a feast.
The centerpiece is a large “sweet-pea”cock, flanked by “chick”weed on each side, “butter”cup, “pica”lily and “pitcher”plant have places.
Alarm at my heart at the solemn tolling bell had hastened my feet hither. To find a scenic banquet is somewhat puzzling. The usual ascending glow, with its usual reversal of shadows, is augmented by the added source, in new portraiture, adding to the picturesqueness of the occasion. Taught at home that all people without Christ are barbaric, I was expecting an abject worship of the disturbed elements. Instead I am pleased as surprised to find it an inspiration of interest only.
I look to get their knowledge of the phenomena. For its solution I have left home and risked my life. That they fear it not, is evident. Instead they love and reverence its benefaction to them—lighting and warming their homes all winter; their winter daylight—as Roban said, in their interior winter quarters. Unusually quiet this season so far, but this is to outdo all, make up for lost time, unprecedented in grandeur. That they understand it I am solicitous to know. I could catch a word now and then. I could understand in the voluble tonic, stream of talk I read from their gestures and expressive faces some meaning of their patriotic interest.
The morning banquet at an end, all sit back in their seats and look at Savant as though some special ceremony is to ensue. Thoroughly excited, I see him hold a state book and read:
“We receive again God’s sign of the disturbance of aurora—our beautiful mother in the earth—who gathers us each winter around her fireside to comfort us in its warm beams.”
“What is aurora?”
“Yearly we ask this question. None have answered us. We yearly invite our subjects to explore her confines, whence she lights her beacon. We invite now.”