A long time they sat together, silent, in the sweet-scented gloom within the flower-girt arbor.
At last he spoke.
“The wonder and the glory of it all!” he whispered. “Oh, the wonder of a dream, a vision come to pass, before our eyes!
“For, see! Has not the prophecy come true? What was then only a yearning and a hope, is it not now reality? Is it not now all even as we dreamed so very, very long ago, there in our little bungalow beside the broad, slow-moving Hudson?
“Is this not true?”
I see a world where thrones have crumbled and where kings are dust. The aristocracy of idleness has perished from the earth.
I see a world without a slave. Man at last is free. Nature's forces have by science been enslaved. Lightning and light, wind and wave, frost and flame, and all the secret, subtle powers of earth and air are the tireless toilers for the human race.
I see a world at peace, adorned with every form of art, with music's myriad voices thrilled, while lips are rich with words of love and truth--a world in which no exile sighs, no prisoner mourns; a world on which the gibbet's shadow does not fall; a world where labor reaps its full reward--where work and worth go hand in hand!
I see a world without the beggar's outstretched palm, the miser's heartless, stony stare, the piteous wail of want, the livid lips of lies, the cruel eyes of scorn.
I see a race without disease of flesh or brain, shapely and fair, the married harmony of form and function; and, as I look, life lengthens, joy deepens, love canopies the earth--and over all, in the great dome, shines the eternal star of human hope!