There is an interminable miscellany of floats, reiterating with less and less force, the general theme of the occasion, and I am about tired out. Then Avanel comes by at the head of her Amazons and Michaelites, all riding milk white ponies. It is the first time I have seen Avanel in command, and Boone did not mention this cavalcade in his paper. Indeed, it is remarked upon as a most arbitrary use of military forces that are accepted by the International Government. Avanel is every inch the commander and, for all she is so slender and young, looks the immortal, Athena, leading forth her city. There must be something, not rumored in the coffee houses, or this demonstration in force would not be permitted this mile of riders. Their faces are not masked as were those of the ancient Ku Klux Klan but the costume is, indeed, as singular. It is, for both the men and the women, in the pattern of the old hunter and trapper outfit of coonskin cap and fringed shirt, jacket, leggins and moccasins. But it is all white leather, with touches of long white fur. The girl’s costumes are cut a bit like the conventional riding habit. The dazzling whiteness would not have been possible before the days of smoke consumers and dustless streets. I behold an avalanche of thundering snow. It is late in the evening, and I am helping the tired Avanel dismount from her pony. Then, we sit together by her unlit fireplace. She has put the hunting knife and the sword back on the mantle and they seem but family relics, and the parade seems but a tale she has told me, and her horse but a thought that she rode today. I walk home through the midnight, under newly blossoming trees. The rich and heavy perfume of the Apple-Amaranth flowers, that are looming delicately against the moon, sweeps around me. It is as though every cluster were a censer from heaven, devised by a lazy and luxurious angel. CHAPTER XI MATTERS TOUCHING ST. FRIEND, THE GIVER OF BREAD, AND HIS ORDER OF THE STRICT OBSERVANCE AND HIS ORDER OF THE LIBERAL OBSERVANCE. June 1, 2018:—In the capital of Illinois, in this year of grace, St. Friend is a healer of the body and soul. He is more of a philosopher than the fuming Black Hawk Boone, that is, he has a cooler disposition. Yet Boone heals by hard maxims, given with that lovely fruit, the Amaranth-Apple. St. Friend heals by sermons and prayers and the pictured parables, the rituals envisaged and illuminated in the celebration of the Office of the Blessed Bread.