ed the hour of the green vapors,
I live again the Year of Tents, the Year of Scaffolding, and like
the triumph of a new theme in a piece of music--the great cities
of our new days arise. Come Caerlyon and Armedon, the twin cities
of lower England, with the winding summer city of the Thames between,
and I see the gaunt dirt of old Edinburgh die to rise again white
and tall beneath the shadow of her ancient hill; and Dublin too,
reshaped, returning enriched, fair, spacious, the city of rich
laughter and warm hearts, gleaming gaily in a shaft of sunlight
through the soft warm rain. I see the great cities America has
planned and made; the Golden City, with ever-ripening fruit along
its broad warm ways, and the bell-glad City of a Thousand Spires.
I see again as I have seen, the city of theaters and meeting-places,
the City of the Sunlight Bight, and the new city that is still
called Utah; and dominated by its observatory dome and the plain and
dignified lines of the university facade upon the cliff, Martenabar
the great white winter city of the upland snows. And the lesser
places, too, the townships, the quiet resting-places, villages half
forest with a brawl of streams down their streets, villages laced
with avenues of cedar, villages of garden, of roses and wonderful
flowers and the perpetual humming of bees. And through all the
world go our children, our sons the old world would have made into
servile clerks and shopmen, plough drudges and servants; our daughters
who were erst anaemic drudges, prostitutes, sluts, anxiety-racked
mothers or sere, repining failures; they go about this world glad
and brave, learning, living, doing, happy and rejoicing, brave and
free. I think of them wandering in the clear quiet of the ruins of
Rome, among the tombs of Egypt or the temples of Athens, of their
coming to Mainington and its strange happiness, to Orba and the
wonder of its white and slender tower. . . . But who can tell of
the fullness and pleasure of life, who can number all our new cities
in the world?--cities made by the loving hands of men for living
men, cities men weep to enter, so fair they are, so gracious
and so kind. . . .

Some vision surely of these things must have been vouchsafed me
as I sat there behind Melmount's couch, but now my knowledge of
accomplished things has mingled with and effaced my expectations.
Something indeed I must have foreseen--or else why was my heart so
glad?

BOOK THE THIRD

TH