“Your name is Springfield. If there is any banner of the soul flying above me, your name is written on it and the white is the pride that makes you so angry and the red is the strength that makes you an Amazon, and the blue of the flag is the prairie sky, of which you are the vainest, loveliest daughter.” Avanel goes into the house with a sharp “Goodnight.”
May 8:—It is a blazing spring day and everything that was not frosted is getting quite green. Baby carriages are abroad, with the pink darlings crowing within them, welcoming the sun. The streets are full of spring finery. About four o’clock on this jolly afternoon I meet Rabbi Terence Ezekiel in Tom Strong’s. We fill up on rousing coffee and I manage to get the conversation around to the Springfield flag about which I am endlessly curious.
The Rabbi says:—“The star of red and white in the heart of the flag, being the twenty-first star in the design, indicates, in the official interpretation, that Illinois was the twenty-first state admitted to the Union and the red part indicates Springfield, the capital.” But Rabbi Ezekiel prefers the idea that this red and white star indicates in the year 2018 the coming of age of Illinois and America.
May 10:—It is Sunday morning, and I am in the Great Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul with Avanel. The whole picture is clean cut around me. Every word and whisper is clear. There are no clouds at all. Yet the Cathedral is indeed gigantic. I am reminded of majestic Notre Dame in Paris. It is the same combination of styles, and St. Friend begins his sermon with an appeal for a special fund to add the steeples. As in cathedrals of Europe, only the rectangular foundations of the spires, a little higher than the roof, are in place.
He preaches the sermon, which Avanel helped him build, which touches on the flag:
“Visitors to the Fair may care to know the path of white around the red star of Springfield is the map of our five-pointed system of double walls and within them a star-plan system of avenues. This system, like this star, is a symbol of the relation of Springfield to all the outside world. The top of the star points north to Chicago by way of the outerwall gate at Mason City. Tomorrow the corn dragon engines begin to take that route. They are to be dedicated with honors that I hope all who hear me will be there to endorse and acclaim. The star-point, indicating northeast, starts our flying machine trip over the inner-wall gate at Illiopolis and the outerwall gate at Warrensburg and on to Danville, if you please, and to New York and the sea journey to the capital of the International Government, which government is looked to with loyalty by all patriots and honorable men. Highways running parallel to the air lines in this direction are haunted by memories of Johnny Appleseed, in the regions of Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Massilon, Ohio. The roads are of some distinction in all the fruit and flower religions of Springfield. Our city sends pilgrims that way in the spring who will yet replant the whole world in glory with many a sacred grove. But the southeast point of the Springfield star system is a road that passes through the inner-wall gate at Taylorville and the outer at Pana, and points in the direction of Virginia and Richmond. Our fruit and flower devotees take all roads, but because of the wonders of the early southern spring many of them deem this the holiest way. There are found, more than other where, the botanizing pilgrims of the faiths of my friend Rabbi Terence Ezekiel and my friend Mother Grey and her daughter Roxana. There many of the Rabbi’s young oaks have sprung up in the name of universal righteousness and that way he still takes his pilgrimage, according to the mystical doctrine of the Oak which is the foundation of our Rabbi’s dreams. This road goes through New Harmony, Indiana, before it turns south into Kentucky. Many pilgrims pass that way to do honor to the original home of the Golden Rain Tree of Democracy.
“The point in the star-plan system of boulevards that becomes a road passing through the inner-wall gate at Modesta and the outer at Palmyra starts the fancy moving along a certain classic flying-machine route over Alton and St. Louis, southwest to the tremendous motion-picture studios of the Los Angeles region and the radical educational institutions evolved from them, which are so great a peril to the land. This air route I call ‘The Path of Ill Learning.’ It is constantly travelled by our motion-picture educators and artists who go to exchange ideas and refresh themselves at Los Angeles, that great seat of spiritual lies.”
At this point Avanel frowns; indeed she will not be bullied out of her movies. But she grows grave again and she takes earnestly what else he has to say:
“The star-point indicating northwest with the inner gate at Ashland and the outer at Virginia is the one that interests me most. There are three orders of discipline in connection with this Cathedral. The newest is the Order of the Blessed Bread of the More Liberal Observance, in whose name we are to have the great bread distribution on June the eighth. The one a little older is The Order of the Blessed Bread of the Strict Observance, a discipline for those lost in despair and determined to seize one more hope, if there be one, before they consent to die.
“But the oldest order, the darling of the founder of the greater work of this Cathedral, is the order of the Pilgrimage, founded here seventy-five years ago by St. Scribe of the Shrines, now gone to his reward. And the road northwest, as all but strangers in the city know, leads from the first shrine, which is the tomb of Lincoln, through the gates at Ashland and Virginia, straight north to Havana and the classic land of Spoon River and Lewiston, to North Dakota and the coast, and so on around the world to the hundred shrines. How many young pilgrims have turned back before they reached the outer gate at Virginia, held more by soul’s weakness than by bodily weariness, within the double walls built so long ago by Ralph Adams Cram! But some here present today have continued the not too difficult journey and have returned to live within these double walls again and adore the Host upon this altar.”