not suit
our sober, practical habits of life and thought; and if we attempted
them, we should only make ourselves ridiculous by our awkwardness.
Festivals of that kind require a volatile people, who at least can
practise folly gracefully. We should unite folly with dulness and
stupidity. Moreover, such festivals cannot be got up to order anywhere.
They are results; they are the growth of centuries. Italians and
Frenchmen do not say, Go to! we will have a carnival. The thing belongs
to them by inheritance; the memories of it mingle with their earliest
recollections. As for us, we might go through a carnival dolefully, as
a penance fitting to Lent; but as to enjoying one, except as
spectators, to us that is quite impossible. All such festivities are
foreign to our nature. We cannot even keep up an interest in
"Decoration Day." We revere the memories of our dead; but a ceremonial
exhibition of our reverence sits ill upon us. We do not take kindly to
public spectacles, and ourselves never appear well in them. As to the
sober procession for which the municipal laws in New York compelled the
projected masquerade to be changed, it will be, if it is at all, only a
means of advertising. That sort of display we take to hugely. It was
with difficulty that President Lincoln's obsequies were preserved
against the projects of advertisers. We turn the mountains into posters
and the hills into sign-posts. If we must do that, let us do it openly
and plainly; but a carnival! Fudge!

* * * * *

--WE cannot successfully imitate Europeans in their graceful follies;
but in their soberer and more practical habits we might well follow
their example. A step has been just taken in Germany which is more
needed here, and which yet there is hardly any hope that we shall
profit by. The union of German apothecaries has addressed a petition to
the Federal Council demanding that the secret medicines concocted and
advertised by quacks shall be officially tested before they are
permitted to be sold. A more creditable and needful step was never
taken, or one which was more indicative of enlightenment and high
civilization. Quack medicines are on the whole a curse to mankind. They
are generally imposed upon the ignorant and credulous by men who care
not what harm they do so long as they profit by their business. Many of
these medicines--so called--are very injurious, and a still greater
proportion of them are enti