The Golden Book of Springfield

by Vachel Lindsay

There are a few people praying at the stations of the cross, in this, Springfield’s new church of St. Peter and St. Paul, on the old site of Sixth and Reynold’s Streets. The time is All Saint’s Day, Anno Domini, 2018. As he tells us the story, the very picture springs before me in elaborate detail, as though I witnessed the event in my own person. The church is indeed gigantic for so small a town to build, and in many particulars as well as general type it is like Notre Dame, Paris. We behold with him how a book of air, gleaming with spiritual gold, comes flying in through the walls as though they were but shadows. It is a book open as it soars, and every fluttering page is richly bordered and illuminated. It has wings of black, and above them wings of azure. Long feathers radiate from the whirring, soaring pennons. The book circles above the heads of the congregation. From the sky comes music incredibly sweet.

The book flies toward the altar, where St. Friend finds himself standing. The wings fade. This day moves with rapid breath. The congregation has been trooping in as the visitant from the world of spirit-wonder has been settling into its own holy place on the altar.

Now St. Friend is in the act of reading the gleaming volume. It is a book of homilies, addressed directly to New Springfield. Day after day the whole population flocks to the cathedral to hear, in the blazing kaleidoscopic costumes of that time,—all kinds of people, saints and sinners. But to speak briefly of the essential story, the town is transfigured and redeemed beyond any merely mundane plan. And so we call 2018 the Mystic Year, and give it other honorable titles of similar import. For the town, then, becomes half-way millennial. Of these qualified but stirring wonders, another time. Let us turn for the moment to the second witness, and hear her version of the appearance of the Golden Book.

The florist had already revealed to me, when I was buying red roses in her gorgeous greenhouse, that she had a strange recurrent picture of the days of Johnny Appleseed’s triumph going through her head. She repeats her story to the other members of the club.

It is of Anno Domini 2018, and though she is still a florist she wears her rue with a difference. She finds herself the exponent of a religion of flowers. Her name is Roxana Grey. She is daughter of a “Mother Grey,” who was in like manner daughter of a “Mother Grey.” There is much interesting detail irrelevant to the present point, but I may say she is first moved to tell me the story because she finds my name on the roll of the backsliders among the devotees of this 2018 religion of flowers. She has a double consciousness that keeps a mind in both periods, but is surprised to find both my name and my very self in the new time.

But as to Johnny Appleseed, which is more to the point of this chapter, she is most uplifted of heart to find that he at last comes into his own in our city and his name is whispered there perpetually.

In his name Springfield has developed the great Amaranth Apple Orchards; it is said, from seeds he gave in his lifetime to a certain pioneer, Hunter Kelly. And it is taught in his name, or with the mood he engenders in our hearts, that he who eats of the Amaranth Apple is filled with a love of eternal beauty, and it is used as the City’s understood symbol of beauty.

Then there is a teaching in his name that he who, after certain prayers, eats of certain acorns, or walks under the oak saplings that come from them, accepts in some sense promptings toward eternal goodness. It has come about that eating the acorn, is the city’s accepted metaphor for the search for righteousness. The earlier devotees of the oak, planted a notable group that have of late grown taller than the California redwoods. They are in a complete circle of twelve, surrounding the very edges of the city. The first two, which are the tallest, are by the inside northwest gate, put there long before there was any gate, by Hunter Kelly, of whom more hereafter. But these oaks, the pillars of Springfield’s temple-cathedral-synagogue, whose roof is the sky, are made the theme of many varieties of teaching, all of which goes back to Johnny Appleseed, who gave to Hunter Kelly the original acorns that made the trees of Oak Ridge, and these pillar oaks as well.

There is another teaching, abroad in Springfield, 2018, the teaching of Democracy, of which the Symbol is the Golden Rain-Tree brought from New Harmony, Indiana. It is said in Springfield, and taught with especial emphasis by the devotees of the Flower Religion, that he who enters under the shade of the Rain-Tree boughs and leaves and flowers, enters the gate of eternal democracy, and so the trees are often called Gate-Trees.

And then having told us so much, my friend speaks again and shows to our spirit eyes an out-of-door statue of John Chapman, Johnny Appleseed, near which she finds herself just before sunrise of All Saint’s Day, Anno Domini, 2018. Roxana is there to watch for the dawn. She walks alone, according to the discipline, saying certain prayers. The park is on the edge of the Governor’s yard.