well, considering how she hates him. But now we are there, and Boone is already speaking: “You all know that my Kentucky forbears went west and settled down near Cairo, Illinois, and also that I feel no odium in the appellation ‘Egyptian.’ Possibly the name of the region, ‘Egypt, Illinois’ derives from the fact that there is an older Cairo, in Egypt. Then Memphis, Tennessee is not so far away. Possibly the floods and the malaria and the frogs and the languor and the witchcraft of legend, where the Ohio comes rolling down into the swamps, help out the Egyptian idea. The time was when ‘Egypt’ meant, exclusively, that part of Illinois by Cairo. Now it is applied in derision to all down state Illinois, by the peanut politicians of Chicago. In a whirlwind world, independent languor becomes a virtue, and meditation engenders a finer art than any nervousness.” Here Avanel whispers to me: “He is a great one to prate of languor.” But now her father is mentioning an artist she admires. “Eric Hedder, who designed these engines, is a ploughboy from near my home-town of Cairo. The corn dragons are indeed messengers from Egypt to Chicago, and other where. The corn-dragon engine is a giant wound-up mechanical toy but something more. It is a kind of citizen, through its Egyptian soul, and through the soul of the engineer who happens at any time to inhabit it. He is one of our new type of aristocracy. The older aristocracies indicated their worth by having themselves photographed in the midst of their athletic sports, at the race track, or playing golf or croquet, or in soldier’s uniform. But in this year of grace, 2018, they are depicted as amateur or professional railroad engineers, or the like. To hold so many lives in trust and to discharge the obligation year after year without faltering is classed as the occupation of a scholar and a gentleman. And so, as is the case of all special privilege, the chariot of privilege is decorated and starred and given plumes like the corn and made glorious. “To me this is a journey from the State of Illinois to somewhere else. Loyalty to Chicago is a commendable thing in itself, but Chicago is the commercial center of the entire United States, and the only way to keep it from tipping and teetering the state clean over, is to bring forward other than commercial considerations. Loyalty to Chicago is loyalty to Florida and California, Oregon and Maine. These are all of them quite commendable commonwealths. But loyalty to Springfield is the distinctive sign of loyalty to Illinois.