Ever the fiery Pentecost
Girds with one flame the countless host.
By various influences and agentsthe Past is summoned beforeus, more vivid than a dream.The process seems as magical as thosewhereof we read in fairy legends, where circlesare drawn, wands waved, mystic syllablespronounced. Adjured by these rites,voices speak, or forms and faces shapethemselves from nothing. So, throughcertain influences, not magical at all,our brains are made to flash with visions[Pg 8]of other days. Is there among us oneto whom this experience is unknown?For whom no particular strain of music,or no special perfume, is linked withan inveterate association? Music andperfumes are among the most potentof these evocatory agents; but manymore exist, such as words, sounds, handwriting.Thus almost always, at thename of the town Cologne, the banksof the golden stream, the GermanRhine, sweep into my sight as first Isaw them long ago; and from a steamer'sdeck I watch again, and again count, atrain composed of twenty-one locomotives,moving ominous and sinister ontheir new errand. That was July 19,1870. France had declared war onPrussia that day. Mobilization was beginningbefore my eyes. I was ten.
[Pg 9]Dates and anniversaries also performthe same office as music and perfumes.This is the ninth of June. This day,last year, I was in the heart of Germany.The beautiful, peaceful scene isplain yet. It seems as if I never couldforget it or cease to love it. Oftenlast June I thought how different thesights I was then seeing were from thosetwenty-one locomotives rolling theirheavy threat along the banks of theRhine. And, for the mere curiosityof it, I looked in my German diary tofind if I had recorded anything on lastJune ninth that should be worth repeatingon this June ninth.
Well, at the end of the day's jottedroutine were the following sentences:"I am constantly more impressed withthe Germans. They are a massive, on-going,[Pg 10]steady race. Some unifying slowfire is at work in them. This can befelt, somehow." Such was my Americanimpression, innocent altogether, deeplyinnocent, and ignorant of what theslow fire was going to become. Sowere the peasants and the other humblersubjects of the Empire who gave me thisdaily impres