We dismount from our cloud and the dwarf goes with us down a corridor in the hill. There are on one side mirrors where details are dimmed, where only big clear outlines of a possible new Springfield are shown, and near by are shown plans for other similar villages in the world. On the other side are mirrors into which we look and see greatly magnified the raw machinery of a possible Springfield in sections that any one can understand. Then we speed along through the passageway and at last come through and see the light of the north sky on the other side of that gorgeous dandelion hill.
The hill seems to be on the very edge of things, and though it has much of the aspect of that place to the east where I saw the Great Palace of Eve, once upon a time, the Dwarf calls this present cliff disrespectfully: “The Jumping-off Place.” And Avanel seems amused and exhilarated. But waves of outer darkness, into which I have looked so often, dash upon the cliff.
The Dwarf says: “This particular Jumping-off Place is one of the principal suburbs of Springfield, and I have seen all kinds of Springfield people and dreams jump off here.”
Then, while we wait interminably, the gnome lets down an iron bucket by a long rope, and brings it up full of the perpetually burning soul bones of animals, men, and dreams that have jumped off. He says: “We live by the death of these.” And he gathers the flames off the top as though they were burning flowers and his hands were iron. And he pours the bones back with a great thunder into the deep of the Jumping-off Place. Then he eats of the terrible burning petals and makes us eat them. Then he leads us back through the corridors and we seem to have been given eyes to see and remember every detail of the microscopic cross section of Springfield and he sends us back riding on the butterfly cloud, and enjoins the Lady Avanel to help in the building of Springfield, day after day.
July 13:—Today I meet the Thibetan Boy in Coe’s Book Store. We are both rather aimlessly turning over the magazines, and, after I have observed his idleness awhile, I take him out for a walk and say: “Why do you look at me when you pass, with your eyes a story untold? All the while I have walked the streets of this New Springfield, you have looked at me so.”
He answers slowly, almost whispering:—
“Your fathers came from the ancient Christian world. My fathers came from the more ancient Buddhist world. Christ is my master but I cannot deny that Buddha is my friend. This is the hour for friends. Come with me.” We walk north on Mulberry Boulevard, past the House of the Man from Singapore, and then west on Carpenter toward a little highway that finally joins the great Northwest Road. But we have not gone far on the Great Northwest Road till we flash past the Gothic double walls of our city.
The Thibetan Boy takes me, in one instant, to the far edge of Space and Time, way beyond the North Star and its dandelions. And as we stand on the shaking shore of Space and Time we see and hear, rolling in from Chaos, endless smoke and glory and darkness and dissolving foam. Standing beside us, like a superb Gandhara sculpture that has taken on life is that Prince Siddhartha who was the founder of Buddhism. He stands in that aspect he had, while still a citizen and householder, and twenty-four centuries before his green glass libel cursed mankind.
Before us is, indeed, a vision of Buddha the dreamer, superb, thoroughbred, in all the jewels of his tribe. It is the hour before he took chariot and drove forth from home. We are back in that hour when he looked upon all things, and saw them as a dissolving foam, the hour before he set forth for his victory over this crumbling universe. His eyes are fixed upon those waves that roll in forever, that keep their forms an instant, and are gone for all time: some of men, some of wraiths and gods, some of planets and comets and suns.
He turns around and beckons and over the sand comes Channa, the superb charioteer, and the horses of that chariot are nobler than the horses of the sun. Prince Siddartha is in the chariot in an instant and they drive out into that sea and the wheels of that chariot ride the waves. Those horses are like lightning, climbing waves that are like hills and mountains, till chariot, horses, and men all are veiled by the endless smoke and glory and darkness and dissolving foam. The Thibetan boy says to me: “It is the ‘Great Going Forth from Home,’ and thus Buddha becomes a conquerer, and Chaos and the Universe are put beneath him.”