HOW THROUGH SERMONS BY ST. FRIEND AND BY POLITICAL ACTIVITY, SUCH AS THAT OF SURTO HURDENBURG, THE YELLOW DANCE HALLS ARE VOTED OUT FOR GOOD.  
June 9, 2018:—I have given up art teaching in a separate studio of my own and have been, for some time, merely writing verses and loafing about and peering into the town, often with old Sparrow Short. This comes about because I have sent my few pupils over to him. He is a most likable fellow. He puts on no airs whatever. We find we have a great ocean of common opinions and identical prejudices in the field of art and an equal love of feeding crumbs to the English sparrows and other such birds and we keep off ground where we would be hostile in argument. I think I did the town a good turn when I persuaded such people as showed symptoms of studying with me, to study with him. In return he urges me to give criticisms in his life classes when I feel the urge to impart to youth, or when he is out loafing, or helping 193decorate some of the newly revamped yellow halls, particularly the Hall of Velaska. The latest occasion when I took over his place came about because he was locked up for days without anyone to go his bail all for alleged treason to the World Government. At last Boone lets him out, by going bond, with a roaring lecture, which is replied to in kind, they say, with no show of gratitude whatever. But the privilege of being out on bond is precarious and liable to be withdrawn to one waiting trial for World Treason and Short keeps me in sight for emergencies. Sparrow Short is, of course, passionately loyal to the Star Spangled Banner and Washington’s Farewell Address but that is considered only one half of patriotism and called “World-Anarchy” now. Most of the people who study under him do not care what his views may be on any subject but art. He is the best teacher and that is enough for them. And, as a matter of fact, in expressing his international views which he does out of teaching hours, he is a roaring baby and unworthy of the attention of grown up politicians. But I tell him that even grown ups in politics should not be too much censured for misunderstanding him. People, like Short, who fight for 194individuality and whose whole object as teachers is to promote the diversity of their pupils, cannot see why the world cannot be one great art class. They are, indeed, in strong contrast with state builders, who build with men in masses and blocks.
This morning Short takes me around to the Hall of Velaska, when it is absolutely deserted except by ourselves, and shows me with pride the pictures he has given the hall. These pictures are so set in the walls, they seem painted there, and the whole color scheme that Short has long planned holds them together. There is a defiant touch of Singaporian green in it, sometimes with the glisten of the hated green glass, but the place is otherwise in the most quiet and inoffensive taste.
The first picture is the one that he had long planned for the World’s Fair, till it was debarred on account of its subject:—the portrait of Mara of Singapore, when she was the age of Juliet. Next is what Short calls a Fairy Fashion-plate, a gown to be worn at the funeral of an exceedingly wealthy bumblebee. If we are to believe our guide, Mr. Short, here is depicted an occasion when one must wear a look of grief and resignation and an appropriate costume. Short explains that all bootlicking 195fairies consider it good form to blacken the face on such occasions. They will not blacken their faces for bumblebees who are poor. But, when a deal of honey is left to sustain the mourners, it has become a convenient manner of expressing grief for the honeyeater to steal an ink bottle off a writing table and spill the ink all over one’s self. One looks more crestfallen than in any conventional black. So this fairy manikin is dressed in gray dove’s feathers and ink poured on her in streaks and her little face is all smudged with it. Soon she will hurry home, take a complete bath, and eat the honey.
The Boy and the Ostrichissimus:—The Ostrichissimus is a bird about three times the size of the ostrich and with ostrich plumes all over it, and some of them so long behind, it has not the insulting shape of the ostrich. A more graceful neck helps also. Its head is not so bald. The Ostrichissimus is driven with a silk cord, passed through the mouth, for a bridle. The boy driving holds on tight with both knees and is a little scared but enjoying himself immensely. They are hurrying across the Sahara desert.
The Devil is Making Candy:—Short explains that this is a picture with a purpose. 196The Devil, in a cook’s costume, is bending over the usual candy kettle. Peeping in at the door are those that wait for his candy. These are the usual run of sinners, types that appear in sermon pictures, the miser with his gold and the Magdalene with her painted jaws, etc. The devil looks exceedingly sly but Short explains that there is nothing for him to look sly about. It is only fudge. The Devil tests it by dipping in his finger, which, of course, he can do without burning himself. “Yet,” says Short, “I would not eat after the Devil’s fingers. Would you?”
The Sewing Machine of Fate:—Fate is an old woman among the stars, big as a sign of the zodiac. She is crouched in a heap over a sewing machine. It is a little too small for her clumsy hands but she can use it. Forever and forever, with eyes that never lift from the plunging needle, she bends over her task, sending through new cloth from the looms of time. When this cloth has passed under the needle, it is written with characters that can never be snipped out. This inscription is all she lives for. Yet, like the inscriptions of the temples of Yucatan, it is forever unreadable except to ghosts, hobgoblins, spooks, and such like creatures, with whom sensible people have nothing to do.
197There is one great blank space on the wall, for the portrait of the mythical queen of the revels in this particular Yellow Hall, Sally Mary Ann Velaska Harris, familiarly called “Velaska.”
Sunday, June 15:—I find myself this morning in the loft of the gigantic Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul with Surto Hurdenburg. His face is still painted blue by mother nature, as a reminder of his long struggles with alcohol. But there are new unquenchable fires within. He looks like a broken down but repentant Bill Sykes. He takes the sermon with great literalness, as I know, by his asides to me.
St. Friend’s voice is much more quavering and old than last Sunday. He is living in the reaction from that tremendous physical outlay. It is as though we were endowed with a special sense of hearing and were listening from celestial parapets to the cry of a sick man on the earth.
Such is the magnificence and medievalism of the old church, so brilliant are its windows, so austere its pillars and niches for the saints, and the images of those saints, that it seems to have been built a thousand instead of a hundred years ago. Yet here are not only images of St. Peter and St. Paul, but of a 198long line of saints, as beautiful as America itself all the way to yesterday. Here are Saint Francis and Swedenborg, and Johnny Appleseed before whom candles are burning:—Hunter Kelly, in his aspect of St. Scribe of the Shrines, and Ralph Waldo Emerson and Mary Baker Eddy, and the first Mother Grey, founder of the flower religion and Jane Addams and that tremendous and divine jester and poet and sage, Abraham Lincoln. There are a hundred other niches with the American saints and world saints and a hundred others waiting for the saints of tomorrow.
But Surto Hurdenburg is listening to the sermon. Here is a fragment thereof:—
“The solution of the problem of the social evil can be given in four words: ‘THE PROUD CITIZEN WOMAN.’
“Springfield has no tenements but until the life of the United States outside of Springfield has its larger hours of leisure and more green clear spaces in which to cultivate codes and fine observances between boy and girl, the custom of selling the young girls to the slaughter will leap over double Gothic walls and invade those groves and parks we call ‘Springfield.’ We have the beginning 199of chivalry in many ways, such as the public school honor pageants and athletic honor tournaments and all the fine codes of Joseph Bartholdi Michael, the First, in connection therewith. We still need more sense of honor, honor beyond the point of Bayard and the Cid.
“There is only one issue for sweethearts:—honor or dishonor, citizen or slave. So it has been from the beginning of time, so it will continue till woman’s redemption and complete emancipation. The fantastic Hindu would die ten thousand deaths before he would break caste.
“The stubborn Mohammedan or Jew will yet be torn to shreds before he will consent to offer to an idol. Not all the tides of the world cynicism has changed these. The Japanese would cut out his tongue before he would speak a slighting word against the flag or honor of Japan or do a work in her despite. Are these people to be mocked for having a code?
“By standing by those Don Quixotic notions they prove they are men, not cattle. America, led by such orchard cities as Springfield and the other capitals that are turning their streets into parks of worship, should have one patriotism, 200one caste rule, one religion, the religion of honoring woman as a comrade citizen.
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