.

As Redbud entered the outer room, the talkers suddenly became silent,
and ran to the windows.

The procession has returned:--the pageant has retraced its steps:--the
swaying, shouting, battle-breathing rout has made the northern end of
the town hideous, and comes back to make the portion already passed
over still more hideous.

Hitherto the revellers have had a clear sweep--an unobstructed
highway. They have gone on in power and glory, conquering where there
was no enemy, defying where there was no adversary.

But this all changes suddenly, and a great shout roars up from a
hundred mouths.

Another drum is heard; mutterings from the southern end of the town
respond.

The followers of the maligned and desecrated Michael are in battle
array--the Dutch are out to protect their saint, and meet the Irish
world in arms.

They come on in a tumultuous mass: they sway, they bend, they leap,
they shout. The other half of Pandemonium has turned out, and
surrounding ears are deafened by the demoniac chorus.

In costume they are not dissimilar to their enemies--in rotundity they
are superior, however, if not in brawn. Every other warrior holds his
pipe between his teeth, and all brandish nondescript weapons, like
their enemies, the Irish.

And as the great crowd draws near, the crowning peculiarity of the
pageant is revealed to wondering eyes.

The Dutch will have their defiant masquerade no less than their
enemies: the Irish parade St. Michael in derision: their's be it to
show the world an effigy of St. Patrick.

Borne, like St. Michael, on a platform raised above the universal
head, in proud pre-eminence behold the great St. Patrick, and his wife
Sheeley!

St. Patrick is tall and gaunt, from his contest with the serpents of
the emerald isle. He wears a flowing robe, which nevertheless permits
his slender, manly legs to come out and be visible. He boasts a shovel
hat, adorned with a gigantic sprig of shamrock: he sits upon the
chest in which, if historical tradition truly speaks, the great boa
constrictor of Killarney was shut up and sunk into the waters of the
lake. Around his neck is a string of Irish potatoes--in his hand a
shillelah.

Beside him sits his wife Sheeley, rotund and ruddy, with a coronet of
potatoes, a necklace of potatoes, a breastpin of potatoes--and lastly,
an apron full of potatoes. She herself resembled indeed a gigantic
potatoe, and philologians might have conjectured that her very na