The Golden Book of Springfield

by Vachel Lindsay

And Avanel asks me: “Do you think we will get on better in woods?”

And so I answer, not quite to the point: “A tree a thousand years old has leaves in the spring, as green as when a sapling. But if my dust had lived to this hour, it would have been the semblance of a palsied man, a horror more than grave clothes. Such as I am, I pray to the God of Heaven that I may be the green leaf in your hair.”

May 16:—I find myself walking in the shadows, where there is neither Springfield nor Jerusalem nor any other known place, where there is neither calendar nor clock nor sun. The clouds of meditation are beneath my feet, storm overhead. One flash of lightning lasts for an eternity and the thunder roll is as long.

May 17:—I walk with Avanel again through our town. As we pass beneath the splendid and soaring towers, we note the signs of the various citizens who occupy the shops, facing the street. As we pass the ladies’ tailoring establishments, we see fancy dress and religious costuming, to be used for ceremonials such as the festival of Hunter Kelly. They are carefully made, these costumes, for permanent and individual use. Many people, men and women, pass us on the street well fitted out, splendid, yet realistic, off hand, casual, and unconcerned, citizens in all sorts of well fitting, brightly dyed ceremonial gear. It is rather the custom of the city to come out more and more gaily for the spring, summer and autumn. In the cold weather it is the idea to dress as of old and according to the customs of the United States, in routine garments.

And now, being light hearted, Avanel and I make an amusement of going the rounds of the more fancy ice-cream parlors. They bear the old names, Maldener’s, Kutrakon’s, Bonansinga’s, Stuart’s, and there is the beautiful place of Najim, the Syrian. Stuart’s is conducted by a direct descendant of the original family, as also Bonansinga’s. Some of the places are in the hands of new firms but keep the old names.

The sign-painters’ shops are a wilderness of bedevilment. They are almost official extensions of the art department of the World’s Fair of the University of Springfield. They are full of everything that may be painted to bring rejoicing to the fastidious stranger.

It is growing toward evening and my dear lady has signified that she will consent to eat with me in that restaurant room of glass, that high tower place, where she gave me my first view of the new city. And, as we walk that way, we are amazed at something as novel to her as to myself. We have been almost noting it to one another all day. With glowering faces and ugly looks, two factions in costume are passing and re-passing one another. And there are threats of fist fights between the young men and some appointments for real battles without gloves are obviously made, with those euphuisms that in the old day covered appointments for pistol deeds.

There are two factions of aviators, one dressed somewhat in the color scheme of the robin, including the vest, which follows the red color of the breast of that bird. The rival faction are the Snobs, who are out with it, make no quibble about being snobs, and are costumed with hints of the wasp and bee. There are as many girls and women, as boys and men, in the Snob and Robin costumes. All this has sprung up from the ground in a few days and is not in the pageant and festival calendar of the city. The aviator’s day for dressing up is in early October. But the surprise is not so much the new costumes as the increasing sharpness of the controversy. Most of the children of the Boone and Michael clans, rivals though they be, are dressed as Robins and expound to us their side of a complicated matter. The substance is that the city is liable to a riot over the use and monopoly of the flying machines by the Snobs, led by one John Nash, sometimes called “Beau Nash,” and the Snobs are defying their enemies and spoiling for a riot. While Avanel and I have our customary little dinner in what was once a quiet corner, two young Booneites we have previously interviewed, having finished their chocolate, come to us and roar their anger again in our ears and seek to recruit our good opinions, as they nerve themselves to subdue the Snobs and if necessary shoot holes in their machines.

May 18:—The costumes of the rival factions have disappeared from these streets. All noise and argument have disappeared. The city goes about the even tenor of its way. The papers are full of the social and military affairs of the Amazons and the Horseshoe Brotherhood and denunciations of the world’s common enemy, Singapore. I am wondering why I have never gone to Camp Lincoln to see these Amazons and Michaelites drilling in full panoply of war and wondering even more why the child Avanel is at the head of them. She must be a sort of “daughter of the regiment,” as one may say, decorative royalty, with the real management in other hands. But I always speak in her presence of military matters as though she were in actual command. Tonight I meet her near her home as she comes riding from Camp Lincoln on her white war pony. She is a centauress.

Not only is her pony white but every thread of her riding habit is white. I help her down from her pony, go through the entirely unnecessary motion of doing so, and we lead the tired steed around to the stable in the rear of the Boone cottage and old Boone is there, waiting to feed and water the creature. The father is ignored and the horse is spoken to by Avanel in terms of endearment. We go into the house and sit by that unlit fireplace and wait for Black Hawk to come in to dinner. All of which is, by the way, preliminary to the fact I wish here to record, that the tired Avanel draws from her belt an old hunting knife and its heavy white sheath and puts it on the mantle with the unbuckled Avanel sword and sheath, then allows me to take them down, and answers my questions about the knife.