use in doing that if you also
get up every morning? We went to the street pageants, we went to the
balls at the French Opera House, we saw the masking on the streets, and
when the carnival was finished we were finished, too.

The great thing about the carnival, it seems to me, is that it bears the
relation to the life of the city, that a well-developed hobby does to
the life of an individual. It keeps the city young. It keeps it from
becoming pompous, from taking itself too seriously, from getting into a
rut. It stimulates not alone the young, but the grave and reverend
seigniors also, to give themselves up for a little while each year to
play, and moreover to use their imaginations in annually devising new
pageants and costumes. From this point of view such a carnival would be
a good thing for any city.

But that is where the Latin spirit of New Orleans comes in, with its
pleasing combination of gaiety and restraint. You could not hold such a
carnival in every city. You could not do it in New York. For more
important even than the pageants and the balls, is the carnival frame of
mind. To hold a carnival such as New Orleans holds, a city must know how
to be lively and playful without becoming drunk, without breaking
barroom mirrors, upsetting tables, annoying women, thrusting "ticklers"
into people's faces, jostling, fighting, committing the thousand rough
vulgar excesses in which New York indulges every New Year's Eve, and in
which it would indulge to an even more disgusting extent under the
additional license of the mask.

The carnival--_carne vale_, farewell flesh--which terminates with Mardi
Gras--"Fat Tuesday," or Shrove Tuesday, the day before the beginning of
Lent--comes down to us from pagan times by way of the Latin countries.
The "Cowbellions," a secret organization of Mobile, in 1831 elaborated
the idea of historical and legendary processions, and as early as 1837
New Orleans held grotesque street parades. Twenty years later the
"Mystic Krewe," now known as "Comus," appeared from nowhere and
disappeared again. The success of Comus encouraged the formation of
other secret societies, each having its own parade and ball, and in
1872, Rex, King of the Carnival, entered his royal capital of New
Orleans in honor of the visit of the Grand Duke Alexis--who, by the way,
is one of countless notables who have feasted at Antoine's.

The three leading carnival societies, Comus, Momus, and Proteus, are
understood to b