Enter a name, company, place or keywords to search across this item. Then click "Search" (or hit Enter).
Volume 3 (1858-1859) (592 pages)
Go to the Archive Home
Go to Thumbnail View of this Item
Go to Single Page View of this Item
Download the Page Image
Copy the Page Text to the Clipboard
Don't highlight the search terms on the Image
Show the Page Image
Show the Image Page Text
Reset View and Center Image
Zoom Out
Zoom In
Rotate Left
Rotate Right
Toggle Full Page View
Flip Image Horizontally
More Information About this Image
Get a Citation for Page or Image - Copy to the Clipboard
Go to the Previous Page (or Left Arrow key)
Go to the Next Page (or Right Arrow key)
Page: of 592
THE GOLDEN CYCLE: A DREAM OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
BY MILLIE MAYFIELD.
The index on the gray dial of Time,
guided by the pendulum of rolling centuries, had reached a magic point; and,
with a sweet cadence inaudible to mortal
ears, the silvery chime vibrated along the
golden bridge that spanned the broad
Pacific from the borders of our lovely
land to the amber-terraced battlements
of the setting sun, whose crimson palacewalls gleamed from the cloud-land shore
with unwonted splendor.
It was a gala eve in those airy towers
—heing the inauguration of the spirit, to
whose charge was consigned the keys
that locked the sparkling caverns of the
Western lands of earth—and the time
had arrived when his duties should assume tangibility; and, clothed with the
panoply of power, he must forth to earth
upon his mission, to rouse the heart of
man by visions of the yellow ore that
rested in the mine’s rough bosom. Dreary had been his initiate during the long
years when the Red Man was monarch of
the soil; when the clear lakes, from their
liquid aqua-marine depths reflected the
birch canoes, suspended, as it were, between two armaments—the one above,
the other below—and the dense forests
and wide-spread plains of the E] Dorado
of the West remained in unbroken silence, save when the twanging bow of the
Indian hunter echoed through the everglades, startling the timid herds, and
sending flocks of feathered warblers from
their leafy retreats, to whirl in fantastic
circles above their invaded premises, and
after a few agitated sweeps, to settle
once more upon their emerald couches.
That day was over. A new era dawned upon progressive Earth, and the fashion of old things had passed away. The
ringing axe of the early settler had cleared broad vistas in the dense shades, and
the tide of emigration flowed towards the
setting sun. The time had come when
the buried wealth of untold ages must be
laid bare—and crowned and sceptred,
wearing at his jeweled girdle a bunch of
golden keys, and hallowed with a rainbow formed by the scintillations from his
prismatic wings as they parted the sunflooded atmosphere—down, down through
the evening twilight like a meteor, sped
the bright spirit on his golden mission.
And at the “open sesame” of his power, back upon their ponderous hinges
rolled the massive doors that guarded the
dower of the Western Bride—while, at
the summons, forth to the wedding feast
came the expectant guests. From the
regions of the Ice-King and the Isles of
the Tropic balm—from the Atlantic’s farspread shores, and from the green prairies of Oregon—from the Rocky and Alleghany mountains’ fastnesses and from
the great Mississippi valley came the pioneers, as the Golden Cycle chimed its
mystic numbers through the reverberating Halls of Space.
Turn we now to a little cottage, situated in the suburbs of the city of New Orleans.
The house is one of a row of six-by-tenfooters, that are built to accommodate the
greatest amount of the human family in
the smallest possible space—each tenement being divided into two apartments,
one opening on the street and the other
into a small, square patch or yard-room,