“The Iron Gentleman” is a savage only two or three days in the year in his old age. He tells his boys’ and girls’ children and grandchildren, that they are to shoe horses and ideas forevermore, and send these ideas galloping across the world, sure footed; and his family are to keep on doing this, whether the town likes it or not. He tells them to hammer out swords perfectly tempered and to put their own souls on the anvil and hammer them till they are swords likewise, and to go forth and cut their way through the world, and bring back the heads of their enemies to Springfield and hang them in rows in front of their forges, whether the town likes it or not.
“The Iron Gentleman” and his sons have revived the cult of boxing and bare fist fighting, and as a result there is many a black eye and bloody nose among both “delicate,” and “muckers” of Springfield. We are as thoroughly damaged as German duelling students, though with not quite the same marks. And the boy scouts are getting battered up, and something must be done to put a stop to this.
“The Iron Gentleman” and his two older sons have the forge-burned faces of blacksmiths. But though the youngest excels in their accomplishments, he is more a brother of his father’s cavalry-sword, the Damascus Blade.
Like the rest he is tall and slender, but there is a difference. He hardly needs his father’s gift to the world; he is such a fencer with the shorter and more conventional blade. He looks like the flattering portraits of Louis Fourteenth of France, that were made in that monarch’s youth. He has a great turn for pageantry, though with him it has taken a completely democratic phase. There is no sounder citizen in all his works and ways than this Joseph Bartholdi Michael. He has studied long under Thomas Wood Stevens, William Chauncey Langdon, and Percy Mackaye. And so he has established a pageantry calendar for the city which has been adopted by the City Commissioners, backed by the Chamber of Commerce, the Art Association, the Rotary Club, the Lion’s Club, and the Optimist’s Club.
He has somewhat mitigated the “scrapping” of the boy scouts by evolving a code book of chivalry for them, and it endeavors to impart taboos, observances, and as well, honorifics for real merit. He ties up all these with the pomps of his calendar. He it is that imparts to his youthful followers a special consideration for the ladies, and reverence for their beauty.
He fought at the Meuse-Argonne, was all through the battle of a little more than five weeks’ length from September 26, 1918, on through hell and glory to November first, when the American First Army cut like magic swords through those four intricate systems of German defenses, that were spread out over those famous ten miles. On November the first he and many Springfield boys, including his two blacksmith brothers, were going on like fate, like their own irresistible blades which they managed to carry into that long five weeks’ battle. In all this Joseph Bartholdi Michael, the exquisite, was the dashing leader of his group, a private in the ranks, but from the beginning to the end, a sword. And they swept forward with the American First Army till the very end of hostilities on the eleventh of November. They did their full share of the work of that American First Army, which, the experts say, took sixteen thousand prisoners, 468 guns, 2,664 machines guns, 177 trench mortars, made an advance of 34 miles in 47 days and set free 1,550 square kilometers of French ground and 150 villages.
Indeed they took their due part in that battle which saved the world.
It is at the end of this battle, at the dawn before Armistice Day, November 11, 1918, that Joseph Bartholdi Michael, the exquisite, has his vision of the year 2018. He dreams of leaving Springfield for a similar battle in Asia, with a far more uncertain outcome. He is about to go forth with The Horse Shoe Brotherhood and the Amazon Riders, armed one and all with the Avanel Sword, against the strange nation of the Singaporians, who are blasting the world with their demon ambition as did the Germans of 1914. And he bears the same name. He is known as Joseph Bartholdi Michael, the Second, is an old man, with a pageant leader for a son:—Joseph Bartholdi Michael, the Third.
Joseph Bartholdi Michael, the Second, has reverted to an exaggeration of “The Iron Gentleman.” His son, on the other hand, is in 2018 an exquisite: almost gone to seed, a histrionic silly. Bartholdi Second that is to be, touches on the history of the clan for one hundred years, for the benefit of the Prognosticator’s Club. On looking deeply into his dream he finds that his father is still known among the descendants as “The Iron Gentleman.” About 1925 the children and grandchildren took for their family flag the picture of six anvils, and above them six hammers.
In the Mystic Year the cottages of these people are scattered in every quarter of the town, and the flag with the six anvils and six hammers flies in front of almost every cottage of a descendant, man or woman. The male descendants, of whatever name or high education, are blacksmiths and forge workers and makers of the Avanel blade, as are indeed many of the women. It seems to take the Michael hammer stroke to make that blade. With a few temporary exceptions, the men are busy horse-shoeing for the Amazons and making swords.