The Inness room at the Chicago Art Institute is another school for the meditative producer, if he would evolve his tribute to France on American soil.  Though no photoplay tableau has yet approximated the brush of Inness, why not attempt to lead Jeanne through an Inness landscape?  The Bastien-Lepage trees are in France.  But here is an American world in which one could see visions and hear voices.  Where is the inspired camera that will record something of what Inness beheld?

Thus much for the atmosphere and trappings of our Jeanne d’Arc scenario.  Where will we get our story?  It should, of course, be written from the ground up for this production, but as good Americans we would probably find a mass of suggestions in Mark Twain’s Joan of Arc.

Quite recently a moving picture company sent its photographers to Springfield, Illinois, and produced a story with our city for a background, using our social set for actors.  Backed by the local commercial association for whose benefit the thing was made, the resources of the place were at the command of routine producers.  Springfield dressed its best, and acted with fair skill.  The heroine was a charming debutante, the hero the son of Governor Dunne.  The Mine Owner’s Daughter was at best a mediocre photoplay.  But this type of social-artistic event, that happened once, may be attempted a hundred times, each time slowly improving.  Which brings us to something that is in the end very far from The Mine Owner’s Daughter.  By what scenario method the following film or series of films is to be produced I will not venture to say.  No doubt the way will come if once the dream has a sufficient hold.

I have long maintained that my home-town should have a goddess like Athena.  The legend should be forthcoming.  The producer, while not employing armies, should use many actors and the tale be told with the same power with which the productions of Judith of Bethulia and The Battle Hymn of the Republic were evolved.  While the following story may not be the form which Springfield civic religion will ultimately take, it is here recorded as a second cousin of the dream that I hope will some day be set forth.

Late in an afternoon in October, a light is seen in the zenith like a dancing star.  The clouds form round it in the approximation of a circle.  Now there becomes visible a group of heads and shoulders of presences that are looking down through the ring of clouds, watching the star, like giant children that peep down a well.  The jewel descends by four sparkling chains, so far away they look to be dewy threads of silk.  As the bright mystery grows larger it appears to be approaching the treeless hill of Washington Park, a hill that is surrounded by many wooded ridges.  The people come running from everywhere to watch.  Here indeed will be a Crowd Picture with as many phases as a stormy ocean.  Flying machines appear from the Fair Ground north of the city, and circle round and round as they go up, trying to reach the slowly descending plummet.