The Golden Book of Springfield

by Vachel Lindsay

The whole town is here; every faction, religion, tribe and tongue. Besides all the Michaels, Boones and Darsies, Bonansingas, Romanoffs, Fagins, Kopenskys, Rocks, Rues, Swartzes, McGinnisses, Ezekiels, Greys, there are even girls of the negro Timmons and Emis families. There are Hymans, Stanleys and Radleys, and all the rest. Each steed is like a pale horse of death. I am thinking that when human beings go forward like this, trained to the last inch, all whipcord and tempered steel, it is no wonder that, left far behind, to make mischief, there are human embers. This must be paid for, by the discarded creatures among us who cannot stand this pace and who are not quite vile enough in ordinary hours to be hid in jails or sanitariums, but who when their little time suddenly arrives, go forth marauding according to their nature and their good luck.

I am beneath the reviewing platform and, as I am meditating, the mayor’s little sister stands up in her stirrups and cuts me across the face with her whip, not checking her pace an instant. Some one behind and above me says: “Evidently you did not see the flags.” It is the Japanese, all courtesy and solicitude. But he has been fortunate enough to see in time and to salute the meteors just ahead of this fiery little rider, the two battle flags of the Amazons, the Star Spangled Banner and the thousand-colored flag that will yet redeem mankind, made of all the flags in the world, sewed into one glorious banner, the Flag of Joseph’s Coat.

But I have my excuse for not seeing the flags of my world. My eyes have been dazzled by Avanel, who has been mourning and hidden three months and three days; she is riding in from a boulevard to the left, hurrying with her escort to the head of the cavalcade.

The meaning of her accoutrement is plain. She is saying, by what she wears: “No Singapore intrigue can drive the child of Daniel Boone from her destiny.” Never was she such a commander as she is in this twilight, with black horse, black gauntlets, black dress, black harness, black plume, all things black and the only flash of white, her mourning face. Her pride is laid low for a higher pride. For the first time her black hair is combed back over her shoulders, after the manner and regulation of the Boones, and she goes forward to resume her command, and the girls cry out in passionate welcome, and there is a terrible mourning and a terrible menace in their cry, when she takes her left hand from the gauntlet, and it is dyed crimson, after the manner and regulation of the Boones.

October 30.—The Amazons of the city, and the Horseshoe Brotherhood have taken possession of the city, and until the day of their going, they will police the city and none shall hinder them, and they ride down the boulevards with little consideration or patience for the loitering of passers by. More and more the Avanel blades hiss in the air, and there is angry fear in the eyes of the women, that the mobs may again own these streets, while the city’s warriors are away in Asia. And this evening The Boone Ax, of which Avanel is now the nominal editor, comes out with an editorial, front page, with her signature:—“I have railed in my time at middle-class respectability. Yet The Boone Ax trusts it today as the one jewel case containing most of the gems of brotherhood. Whatever its policy in the past The Boone Ax now puts at the head of its regular inside editorial page a picture of Confucius, and under it this description:—‘The champion of old-fashioned, middle-class decency and respectability, and the lawgiver for this paper.’

“The picture goes there as our only vengeance for the death of the founder of this paper, and as our eternal reminder of that act.

“As a matter of getting down to the bed rock of civilization we turn to the world’s most ancient champion of propriety and civility and fight lynch law and all popular and ill-considered whirlwinds, until our paper has won its battle, or is wiped from the face of the earth.”

November 1, 2018:—But Confucius is not the patron saint of the lady Avanel.

It all comes as a clouded vision before me as though I were half in the vision, and through it beginning a new and more desperate destiny of my own. It is the snowy morning of All Saints’ Day. Representatives of the Michael Clan, young and old, Horseshoe Brotherhood, Amazons and many others are at the crossing of Fifth Street and Capital Avenue, by the ancestral Blacksmith Shop. The horse of the conquering Avanel Boone is to be shod by that good sport, Joseph Bartholdi Michael, the Second, as a sign of fealty, and in final preparation for the going forth against Singapore. Scattered among the Michaels are the long-haired, black-haired Boones, with the locks of both the men and women streaming back over their shoulders, after the manner and regulation of the Boones, and their left hands dyed crimson, as a perpetual reminder to themselves and all the world of certain strains of Red Indian ancestry.

While the snow is blowing into the shop, white-haired Joseph Bartholdi Michael, the Second, aided by his son, the Third, have taken the old shoes from the dainty feet of the white pony, and just as the old warrior is lifting a new shoe from the fire, the flames leap up, there is a music incredibly sweet and, with a great whirring of wings and terrible thunder, the Golden Book flies out of the fire and circles above these two clans and their satellites of renown.