“A travelogue sounds appropriate,” she concluded.

Holmes, a handsome man with a civil beard and facile eyes, had traveled the world, first with a 60mm Demeny that sat like a boulder on a cast-iron tripod, then replacing it with a more agile 35mm Bioscope that rode an adjustable swivelhead. Europe, Japan, and South America had fallen like dominoes. Siberia and the Spice Islands likewise. He hadn’t an ounce of theory in his soul. Theory took too much time.

In Detroit, he began as he always did, explaining, “To travel is to possess the world. But you are no monopolist. It is not yours alone.” This was deep enough for him. What did it mean when his very presence made a place no longer remote? When the objective eye of the lens rendered subjectivity antique, what would the new century become?

He didn’t ask, because he didn’t care. He cared about sharing what he’d seen. Today, in Detroit, he showed jungles. Natives. More jungles. Ceremonies involving natives swinging on vines found in jungles.

It was interesting for about two minutes for young eyes that had never seen anything of the world, and certainly nothing in motion like this. Then young Hugo got itchy and peevish, for he was indoors on a nice day that he could have better spent with his bucket on Jefferson Avenue. What if it had caught fire in his absence? He smelled for smoke. The library’s grand lecture hall had seats so comfortable as to rival a ducal palace in the transalpine monarchies. Heavy tapestries cut out all light, the room was overly warm, and Burton Holmes was speaking like a cello, ponderous and asking for nothing in return, and the problem was, a correspondent, no matter how far-flung, is not quite a hero. When his third film, about the condor-sized bats, began to unspool, the entire audience—three-eighths of them the Black family—were sound asleep. “We begin to return to our own shores as before,” he said, undiscouraged. “Professor Byrd, the one in the canoe, says that such return, enlivened by experience, is epanalepsis.”

Hugo Black’s eyes flickered open. He was drowsy and happy, and feeling safe the way only a boy dozing between dozing parents can feel. He had seen, between dreams, his first motion pictures, jungles, birds sitting on the tattooed shoulders of smiling natives. Everything looked as it had in his picture books and encyclopedias. All was well.

“To bring it to our own shores, an educational moment for you, Detroit. The ocean!” Burton proclaimed.

The screen showed previously unseen motion of waves towering, light passing through, sunlight glinting off of them, kelp suspended within salt water, then crashing down.

“This is Crescent City, California, our own country. But have any of you seen something like this?”