Ionia: Land Of Wise Men And Fair Women. Alexander Craig. Chicago: E. A. Weeks Co., 1898. Illustrations and cover design by J. C. Leyendecker. First edition.
“A young English philanthropist visits a hidden country in the Himalayas where a race descended from the Greeks and the Danes have solved humanity’s problems by practicing principles proclaimed by a warrior-king long ago; common land, limited inheritance, and eugenics with a vengeance …”
At last I understood in what way decades devoted unselfishly day and night to art really mattered. The love of beauty had been our lifelong refuge as black men, a raft that carried us both safely for sixty years across a turbulent sea of violence, suffering, and grief to a far shore we’d never dreamed possible in our youth, one free of fear, and when his journey was over, laid him gently, peacefully to eternal rest.
