that all along the line of
route children and young girls, provided with large baskets of flowers,
were stationed, and, as the procession approached, these young people
stepped forward and strewed the road with the contents of their baskets,
thus carpeting the hard pavement with freshly gathered flowers, which
exhaled a delightful fragrance as they were trampled under foot by the
horses.

The young monarch, bowing right and left in response to the enthusiastic
greetings of his subjects, now had an opportunity to observe a few of
the more striking characteristics of the people among whom he had been
thrown in so extraordinary a fashion, and he was considerably surprised
to see how widely the different types varied. The lower orders--or what
he deemed to be such, from the fact that they were compelled to take as
their viewpoint the pavement of the open street--were, as a rule, of
merely medium stature, sturdily built, and not particularly intellectual
in expression, while the colour of their skin was something very nearly
approaching to ruddy copper, very few even of their womenkind having any
pretentions to comeliness, to say nothing of beauty. The occupants of
the buildings, however, who viewed the procession from their windows or
the flat roofs of their houses, and who might be taken to represent a
somewhat better class, were not only lighter in colour and more
intelligent in expression, but some of them were distinctly good-
looking. And, as a general rule, the larger and more important the
building--and presumably, therefore, the higher the rank of the owner--
the more strongly marked was the difference, which at length, in the
case of the nobles, became so accentuated that they might very easily
have been taken to be members of a distinct race, the men being much
fairer of complexion, of greater stature, and more finely proportioned,
as well as much more intellectual in appearance than their humbler
brethren; while the women of the higher classes and nobility were in
many cases as fair and as lovely as, say, Spanish or Italian women.

Winding its way slowly through some two miles of wide and handsome
streets, the buildings in which became ever more imposing as it
advanced, the cavalcade at length arrived before a very large building
of two stories in height--as against the single story which appeared to
be the vogue in the City of the Sun--planned to form three sides of a
square, and standing in the midst of a m