Avanel and I are early for Church and so we make a circuit, enjoying the airy splendors of the crowd. And we go around by St. John’s Hospital, so lately rebuilt by the insistence of Mayo Sims, to vindicate his scientific zeal, and they say it is a splendid scientific monument to any man. It is east of the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul, as it has been for over four generations. And the heretic synagogue and the school for teaching Hebrew, conducted by Rabbi Terence Ezekiel, are on the sites where the two orthodox synagogues were, one hundred years ago. The green in front of the Cathedral was enclosed by a beautiful Gothic wall long ago, at the same time the devout congregation rebuilt the church. The enclosure is rapidly filling with people. St. Friend is to speak to the whole city from the Cathedral steps. Piled on great wooden trays on the side of the Cathedral steps are the splendid brown loaves, put there for all the world by the Brotherhood of the Strict Observance, who are about in their almost monkish official robes, proud indeed to be so prominent. Blue-faced Surto Hurdenburg, so lately sworn in, is an ex-headwaiter of alleged New York hotel training and he is now to prove his mettle. He is about his task decorously and swiftly enough, for those seated and settled already have the tissue-wrapped loaves in their laps, and all through the sermon, as fast as our citizens are settled, they are given their loaves without a sound or a grimace, and Hurdenburg, the efficient, rises high at once in the estimation of the children of light. But now the saint rises to speak. He is indeed a figure; his white hair gleams in the June morning air. His face is the face of Lincoln, grown old, with a touch of St. Francis eternally young. He straightens to his full height. He is fifty years younger. He is one of those capable of seeming collapse for weeks, when it is but the storage time, and then the lightning is discharged in one tremendous hour. There is a certain vast medieval humor about him. He is vested in his ceremonial baking apron and Avanel giggles till he actually begins to speak. This is the end of his sermon:— “Pray consider that, in your freedom from vows this splendid June day, you are nevertheless dubbed knights, my fellow citizens. In medieval times monks and knights served the Church with the same divine vocation and devotion. “The Church of Springfield has come. It is the sunlit grass of this park; it is this Illinois sky. Under the roof of this Cathedral behind me and of all the churches, temples, and synagogues of this town, its primer work has been done and will be done. It will begin with sheltered faiths and will not contradict or undermine any.