The Golden Book of Springfield

by Vachel Lindsay

But America has not suffered the regime of nigh two hundred years of baseball umpires:—and presidential elections accepted by November 15 by the defeated party, without a disposition to be good sports on the part of self-respecting clans like these. And so it comes about to stir the romantic soul of the town that the Avanel Blade of the “Iron Gentleman” of 1920 has become a woman in 2018, but a woman no kin to the Michaels. In 2018 Horse Shoe Brotherhood and Michael Amazons are under one commander, the lovely Lady Avanel Boone, and, though they be armed with the Avanel Blade indeed, she scores a point in family pride and makes them swear fealty on Daniel Boone’s old hunting knife, which she carries in her belt as a token of her Kentucky forbears.

And now, as the son of the “Iron Gentleman” tells the story, it comes as a clouded vision before me, as though I were half in the vision and beginning a destiny of my own.

It is the snowy morning of All Saint’s Day, 2018, the Michael Clan and a general assembly of Springfield people are at the crossing of Fifth Street and Capital Avenue, and by the ancestral forge on the southeast corner. The fire is burning high and the bellows is roaring. The horse of the conquering Avanel Boone is to be shod by that good sport Joseph Bartholdi Michael, the Second, who has just returned from the World Government to take his modest place in the ranks of her following. And then there are these curly haired, black browed, black bearded rascals to whom all Michaels must be polite, and these Red-Indian looking girls and boys, Avanel’s innumerable adoring cousins who are publicly admiring her with hectic words and kissing her with sugar sweetness and honest family idolatry. There is a touch of the uncanny, the restless, the Ishmaelite about all these Boones, they have no business in the streets of a town. They look like dressed-up wood-choppers, all but that trim Avanel.

While the snow is blowing into the shop, white-haired Joseph Bartholdi Michael, the Second, has taken the old shoes from the dainty feet of the white pony, and, just as he is lifting a new shoe from the fire and the flames leap up, there is a music incredibly sweet, and with a great whirring of wings and terrible thunder “The Book” flies out of the fire, and circles above these two clans. Avanel with eyes fixed and strained in wonder, follows it on her unshod horse. The Book settles into her arms, and I see her sit above the company like a fairy in a trance, and read with adoring voice from the snow white book while the assembled clans and all the citizens gather close to hear.

The first pages of the volume give in jewelled and flaming letters a new charter and constitution for the World Government, based on the life and teaching of Springfield’s deathless citizen, Abraham Lincoln.

There is in the air an exquisite song and around the consecrated Avanel a glory ineffable, for she is the High Priestess of The Book for her people. The song in the air praises her, and urges her, and all those she commands, to valor for the Heavenly Star Spangled Banner and the Heavenly International Flag. And the song whispers that the book, in many strange forms, will appear in many a green field of our middle west this day, in many a pulpit and many a lonely mourner’s house to give life and eternal light.

But, as my neighbor from the blacksmith shop of 1920 tells the tale more slowly, the vision turns to mere words again, and then to dust and ashes. And I myself seem but ashes on the winds of time.

The histories of the future in the Prognosticator’s Club are no more contradictory than the accounts our fathers give of the leading events of the Civil War.

Everywhere South of Mason and Dixon’s line they say that Grant surrendered to Lee. It is in every southern school book. When we look into history we are made dizzy by cloud and flame. And we shall still be partizans in the highest Heaven. There are many earthly languages. There are many heavenly languages. There are many blazing, blinding tomorrows. But they all lead to the same glorious tomorrow at last.

The Prognosticators are a dithyrambic, chanting, improvising howling dervish set, with a certain sense of humor among all these blinding lights, which is but to say they have elasticity of soul and mind.