They have taken the ocean ships or airships of Seattle, they have gone afoot and by every known vehicle through Asia. It is a journey unforgettable—to the holy land of Confucius and to his holy grave, to the Blessed Bohdi Tree of Buddha, to the bathing places of Benares, to the holy places of Mecca, Jerusalem, Assisi, Rome, Lourdes, and London. I, too, in my youth, with a fiery young company from Springfield made this pilgrimage which was first undertaken by St. Scribe and written down later in his little book of Discipline called: ‘The Hundred Shrines.’ We went by motor, by steamship, by flying machine, but whenever possible, afoot. Let the visitor in this audience note that he who prays at these shrines, according to the office of The Brotherhood of The Hundred Shrines, has made, we think, the true beginning of life for a modern soul.
“Every shrine is a modern Station of the Cross. Between shrine and shrine, await many desperate foes of the soul. And so I have often called it ‘The Road to Heaven and Hell.’ There is no nominal way to take this discipline. He who is a little hurt by this discipline is destroyed.”
May 11:—Avanel and I are taking lunch together at the Fire Cracker King Restaurant and Coffee House. She is, indeed, giving her absent father a scolding. It seems that Black Hawk Boone has presumed to “offer advice.” And she “hates him.” I venture to inquire wherein he has been so presumptuous as to attempt to guide her wandering feet. And it seems that he thinks she is too fond of long rehearsals for the celebration of the festival of St. Scribe, May fifteenth in the Gordon Craig Theatre, and not enough devoted to the Amazonian drill ground. He wants three drills a week, not two. He says we may be at war with Singapore any day and she cannot dance to victory and had best quit religious dancing, till after the war. My reply is quite deft. I insist that I, at least, am prepared to appreciate her dancing and am only waiting the next appearance at the Gordon Craig Theatre and she continues to scowl but says I have but till the fifteenth to wait. It is now about two in the afternoon and we are going to hear some speeches. Avanel explains to me that the first Corn Dragon Engines are starting, with great ceremony, to Chicago and we are to hear orations at the station before they go. The transportation district centering in Illinois has, through Eric Hedder, a ploughboy from near Cairo, evolved a type of a dragon engine, a mate to the dragon-fly flying machine. A complete set of these engines have just been finished for the Springfield and Chicago division. They are equipped with silvery horns instead of shrill whistles. The exercises are, of course, at the gigantic Union Depot at Tenth and Washington. The passengers of honor include this Eric Hedder, the Mayor and some of his political enemies, including Black Hawk Boone, who is making the speech of the afternoon. This prospect seems to please his daughter fairly well, considering how she hates him. But now we are there, and Boone is already speaking:
“You all know that my Kentucky forbears went west and settled down near Cairo, Illinois, and also that I feel no odium in the appellation ‘Egyptian.’ Possibly the name of the region, ‘Egypt, Illinois’ derives from the fact that there is an older Cairo, in Egypt. Then Memphis, Tennessee is not so far away. Possibly the floods and the malaria and the frogs and the languor and the witchcraft of legend, where the Ohio comes rolling down into the swamps, help out the Egyptian idea. The time was when ‘Egypt’ meant, exclusively, that part of Illinois by Cairo. Now it is applied in derision to all down state Illinois, by the peanut politicians of Chicago. In a whirlwind world, independent languor becomes a virtue, and meditation engenders a finer art than any nervousness.”
Here Avanel whispers to me: “He is a great one to prate of languor.” But now her father is mentioning an artist she admires.
“Eric Hedder, who designed these engines, is a ploughboy from near my home-town of Cairo. The corn dragons are indeed messengers from Egypt to Chicago, and other where. The corn-dragon engine is a giant wound-up mechanical toy but something more. It is a kind of citizen, through its Egyptian soul, and through the soul of the engineer who happens at any time to inhabit it. He is one of our new type of aristocracy. The older aristocracies indicated their worth by having themselves photographed in the midst of their athletic sports, at the race track, or playing golf or croquet, or in soldier’s uniform. But in this year of grace, 2018, they are depicted as amateur or professional railroad engineers, or the like. To hold so many lives in trust and to discharge the obligation year after year without faltering is classed as the occupation of a scholar and a gentleman. And so, as is the case of all special privilege, the chariot of privilege is decorated and starred and given plumes like the corn and made glorious.
“To me this is a journey from the State of Illinois to somewhere else. Loyalty to Chicago is a commendable thing in itself, but Chicago is the commercial center of the entire United States, and the only way to keep it from tipping and teetering the state clean over, is to bring forward other than commercial considerations. Loyalty to Chicago is loyalty to Florida and California, Oregon and Maine. These are all of them quite commendable commonwealths. But loyalty to Springfield is the distinctive sign of loyalty to Illinois.
“The engines will rush back, bringing skilled mechanics, wise industrial statesmen, and world leaders in art for little Springfield, down here in Egypt. Such people are held in infinitely higher honor here than in the Chicago that made them. All men and women seem to have increased in vanity in this year 2018, and this is a highly commendable change. I rejoice that citizens of the United States now live upon honor and its power more than upon the desire for mere currency. So the corn-dragons will always be robbing Chicago, America’s commercial capital, of her best. People will keep coming here for much smaller salaries and for more passionate praise. [Applause!]
“I hope that the whizzing and whistling of these engines, henceforth more musical than of old, will be the war cry of our whole Egyptian village and countryside. I hope that for generation after generation many dragons of this breed will whirl by, and many another ploughboy, sighting them through the cornfields, will not only catch the original vision of Eric Hedder, but new untamed dreams of art and glory and creation will be engendered on such days.
“Without haste, without rest, our rewards and appreciations pay for our creations. Let the young Egyptian patriot see these dragons as big brothers that sweep through the high growing corn armies, messengers flying from county to county, crying in the trumpet glory of their silver voices, that art and life are married in the region of the capital.” [Great Applause!]