Based on the story by Stephen Vincent Benet. Adapted by Brainerd Duffield.
Cast: 4m., 1w. (cast includes 1 boy, non-speaking role and variable chorus.) We begin with gentle, primitive people—an older man talking to his son, a young man who wants to go on his journey. Meanwhile, the chorus behind them calls out warnings. It is forbidden to go to the East, forbidden to cross the Great River, forbidden to go beyond to the Dead Places. However, the young man crosses the Great River called Ou-dis-sun, comes to the Dead Place where remaining pieces of stone have bits of words such as "Ashing," "Li coln" and "Biltmore." In another dream-vision which is reinforced by the strange-to-him sounds of city traffic, horns, sirens and panic, he sees an apparition who tells of the death of civilization in this place once called "Newyork." The young primitive returns safely, filled now with determination to learn somehow from the remaining books, mend the broken magic tools and begin again. Bare stage.