threats of
swift immolation. Defiantly it rose to a pinnacle, hiding its
mutilation, and flaunted its vivid tendrils to bear witness to its
invulnerability till a killing frost followed by another snowfall
covered it again.

Since the delusive hope had been so high, the disappointment threw the
public into a despair greater than ever before. The nervous tension of
anxiety was replaced by a listlessness of resignation and the suicide
rate, high before, now doubled. For the first time a general admission
was to be heard that no solution would be found and in another season
the end would come for the United States. Facing the prospect squarely,
an exodus of the little people, as distinguished from the earlier flight
of men of wealth and foresight, from the country began.

This was the first countermeasure attempted since the Grass crossed the
Mississippi, and in reaction to its collapse, the return of Brother
Paul's expedition passed almost unnoticed. Only _Time_, now published in
Paris, bothered to report it for general circulation: "Last week from
some undisclosed spot in mid U.S. returned Mother, 'The Forerunner' Joan
(real name: unknown), and party. Dispatched Grassward by Brother Paul,
doom-predicting, advent-prophesying graminophile evangelist, the purpose
of Mother Joan's expedition had been her 'Sanctification,' above the
exact spot where the Savior was waiting in the midst of the Grass to
receive His faithful disciples. Said Brother Paul to reporters after
embracing The Forerunner enthusiastically, 'The expedition has been
successful.' Said Mother Joan, off the record, 'My feet hurt.'"

_62._ The coming of spring was awaited with grim foreboding, but the
Grass was not bound by any manmade almanac and unable to contain itself
till the melting of the snow, again leaped the barrier of the
Mississippi, this time near Natchez, and ran through the South like
water from a sloshed dishpan. The prized reforms of the black
legislatures were wiped out more quickly even than their
greatgrandfathers' had been in 1877. The wornout cotton and tobacco
lands offered hospitable soil while cypress swamps and winter-swollen
creeks pumped vitality into the questing runners. Southward and
eastward it spread, waiting only the opening of the first pussywillow
and the showing of the first crocus to jump northward and meet the
western advance there.

The dwindling remnants of cohesion and selfcontrol existing before now
disappeared