One day there was a white frost that fell upon the city, lasting
for many hours, so that a strange thing happened, at which men
wondered very much. The city put aside its colors of black and
brown and gray, and dressed itself in silvery white. No stone
nor brick was seen except in this silvern frosty color. All the
spires were glittering in silver, and all the columns bore
traceries as though the hands of spirits had labored long and
delicately and had seen their tender fretwork frozen softly but
for ever into silver. The gross city had put aside corporeal
things, and for once its spirit shone fair and radiant; so that
men said no such thing had ever been before.
That evening the frost still remained, and as the night came on
a mist fell upon the city. From the windows men looked out, and
lo! the beautiful city so made spiritual was vanishing. One by
one the great buildings, the tall spires, the lofty columns had
faded into a white dream, dimmer, fainter, less and less
perceptible, seen through a gentle envelope of whitening haze.
This thing was of a sort almost to make one tremble as he looked
upon it, for the city which had been silver had turned to mist,
and the mist seemed fair to turn into a dream. There are those
who say it did become a dream, and afterward descended. For
wanderers in desert countries tell that at times they have seen
some far city of dreams, alluringly beautiful, but evanescent,
intangible, unattainable, trembling and floating upon the
wavering air.
Now when I saw the city thus fade away and disappear, I sat down
at my table, and, as many men did that night, I wondered much at
what I had seen. For surely the soul of the city had arisen.
Then the Singing Mouse came and gazed into my face.
"What you have seen is true," said the Singing Mouse. "There is
no city now. It has gone. You have seen it disappear. Its soul
has arisen. This does not often happen, yet it can be, for even
the city has a soul if you can find it.
"But if I say the city has gone, I mean only that it has left
the place where once it was. That which once was, is always,
corporate or not corporate. We err only when we ask to see all
with our eyes, to balance all within our hands. Come with me,
and I will show you where the city went."
So now the Singing Mouse waved its hands, and I saw, though I
knew not where I looked.
I saw a country where the trees grew big and where the wild-fowl
came. It was where the trees had never been felled, nor had the
stones ever been hewn. The sky was blue, and the water was blue,
except where it played and laughed, and there it was white.
There was a small house, of a sort one has never seen, for none
in the cities is like it. The blue smoke curling from the
chimney named it none the less a home. I hardly knew what time
or place we had come upon, for the Singing Mouse, whose voice
seemed high and exalted, spoke as though much was in the past.
"This is a Home," said the Singing Mouse. "Once there were no
homes. In those days there was only one fire, and it was red.
By this man sat. He sought not to see.
"Once a man sat at night and looked up at the heavens, seeking
to know what the stars were saying. He besought the stars,
praying to them and asking them to listen to the voice of the
water, and to the voice of the oaks and to the whispers of the
grasses, and to tell him why the fire of earth was red, while
the fire of the stars was white.
"Now, while this man besought the stars, to him a strange thing
happened. As he looked up he saw falling from the heavens above
him a ray of the white light of the stars. It fell near to him
and lay shining like a jewel in the grass. To this the man ran
at once, gladly, and took up the white light, and put it in his
bosom, that the winds might not harm it. Always this man kept
the white light in his bosom after that. And by its light he saw
many things which till that time men had never known. This man
found that this new light, with the red light that had been
known, filled all his house with a great radiance, so that small
strifes were not so many, and so that life became plain and
sweet. This then that you see is that Home.
"This that you see around you," it continued slowly, "the large
trees and the green grass, and the blue sky and the smiling
waters, all this is wealth; wealth not corporate, wealth
valuable, wealth that belongs to every man ever born upon the
earth, and which can not of right ever be taken away from him.
Shorn of that, he is poor indeed, though not so poor as he who
shore him. Unshorn of this, he is rich. In our land our hearts
ache to see these terms misused, and that called wealth which is
so far from worth the having. But here, where I have brought
you, you shall see humanity undwarfed, and you shall see peace
and largeness in the life which you once thought small and
sordid."
[Illustration]
Then as I looked, there stepped from the house a man, or one
whom I took to be a man. This man stood in the cool, fresh
morning, and gazed at the sun, now rising above the tops of the
great trees. He smiled gently, and taking in each hand a little
water from a tiny stream that flowed near by, he raised his
hands, and still smiling, offered tribute of the water to the
sun. I saw the water falling down from his hands in a small
stream of silver drops, shining brightly. It was the way of the
land, the Singing Mouse said; for they thought that as the water
came from the sky and returned to it, so did man and the
thoughts of man, and the fruits of his progress; never to be
destroyed.
At all this I looked almost in fear, for the thought came that
perhaps this was not Man as we knew him, but the successor of
Man. "Where is this land," I asked of the Singing Mouse, "and
what is this time upon which we have come?"
The Singing Mouse looked at the green trees, and at the kind
sun, and at the blue sky and the pleasant waters, and it said to
me slowly: "There was once a city where these trees now stand."
[Illustration: The Bell and the Shadows]
[Illustration]