A stranger to these others comes to me. Nathan Levi, son of one of the Rabbis of our tiny Springfield Ghetto. He at once wins my heart. I have always found myself in peculiar sympathy with the Jews. Once past the moment of shyly seeking my confidence, he is full of the Jewish expressiveness and demonstration. He is astonished beyond measure to discover a double consciousness within himself. In this century he is as orthodox as his father, and a young man devoted to the routine of the pawn shop. In 2018 he is in a hundred ways opposite.
Another newcomer, Margaret Evans, is a Christian Science Reader. She is beautiful, in this day, and though she does not speak of her mirror in 2018, as does the headlong Jewish boy, I know she will always be beautiful in body and soul. She has fathomed the holy grace and immortal gladness of her teaching, and I can well believe she is immortal in this place, under our oak and apple trees.
Still another is a Springfield Negress who is a preacher among her own people. She has not a single Caucasian contour to her face or figure, yet all the world must admit that Daisy Pearl Johnson is beautiful as she is divinely young. She is “black but comely,” according to the scripture. And she is eager in all the matters of the mind and spirit.
Another prophet, Nathaniel Davidson, gathers several denominations under one temporary roof, and preaches to them about hell. He was once a Y. M. C. A. physical director, and he ranges in attributes from Caliban to higher things, and looks much like Douglas Fairbanks and William. A. Sunday. He receives an invitation to join the Prognosticator’s Club.
Then there is a woman who was a welfare worker in France. Ruth Everett has such a sleek and sophisticated grace, and her face is so snobbish yet so Alexandrian Greek that I have often called her “The Daughter of Lysippus.” In every line is the elegance that old sculptor might have loved. In pomp, upon her throne, and she makes any chair her throne, she is like “Sara Siddons as the Tragic Muse” as painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds.
And here you have men and women who see the vision, each in a strange and mystical fashion.
CHAPTER III
HOW PEOPLE OF 1920 THINK THE GOLDEN BOOK WILL COME IN 2018
When we, the Prognosticator’s Club, come together for our meetings it is inevitable that our talk should be of the Springfield of our fancy and of the manner in which the vision has come to each one.
The first to testify, when we call the members together in the Sun Parlor of the Leland Hotel is the young Campbellite minister. He tells us of a dream that has come to him on many evenings by his study fire.
In a vision he is reborn three or four generations in the future. He is a priest of the Catholic Church. He is known as St. Friend, the Giver of Bread. He is almost alone in a vast Gothic Cathedral. He is astonished to find himself changed in body, conviction, and habit from all his former routine, but enough memory remains for the comparison, and he knows he is still himself. But of this another time.