There were two separate and distinct sides to the annual carnival of the Knights of Midas. The main object to which the many committees on arrangements addressed themselves was the assembling in Clarkson of as many people as could be collected by assiduous advertising and the granting of special privileges by the railroads. The streets must be filled, and to fill them and keep them filled it was necessary to entertain the masses; and this was done by providing what the committee on publicity and promotion proclaimed to be a monster Pageant of Industry. The spectacle was not tawdry nor ugly. It did not lack touches of real beauty. The gaily decked floats, borne over the street car tracks by trolleys, were like barges from a pageant of the Old World in the long ago, impelled by mysterious forces. From many floats fireworks summoned the heavens to behold the splendor and bravery of the parade. The procession was led by the Knights of Midas, arrayed in yellow robes and wearing helmets which shone with all the effulgence of bright tin. There was a series of floats on which Commerce, Agriculture, Transportation and Manufacturing were embodied and deified in the persons of sundry young women, posed in appropriate attitudes and lifted high on uncertain pedestals for the admiration of the multitude. On other cars men followed strenuously their callings; coopers hammered hoops upon their barrels; a blacksmith, with an infant forge at his command, made the sparks fly from his anvil as his float rumbled by. An enormous steer was held in check by ropes, and surrounded by murderous giants from the abattoirs; Gambrinus smiled down from a proud height of kegs on men that bottled beer below. Many brass bands, including a famous cowboy band from Lone Prairie, and an Indian boy band from a Wyoming reservation, played the newest and most dashing marches of the day. Thus were the thrift, the enterprise, the audacity, and the generosity of the people of Clarkson exemplified. Such was the first night's entertainment. The crowd which was brought to town to spend its money certainly was not defrauded. The second night it was treated to band concerts, a horse-show and other entertainments, while the Knights of Midas closed the door of their wooden temple upon all but their chosen guests. These were, of course, expected to pay a certain sum for their tickets, and the sum was not small. The Knights of Midas ball was not, it should be said, a cheap affair. Raridan and Saxton had taken a balcony box for the ball and they asked Evelyn's guests to share it with them. Raridan still growled to Saxton over what he called Evelyn's debasement, but he had said nothing more to Evelyn about it. "Here's to the deification of Jim Wheaton," he sighed, as he and Saxton waited for the young ladies in the Porter drawing-room. Saxton grinned at him unsympathetically. "Stop sighing like an air-brake. You will be dancing yourself to death in an hour."