't find her, wisely giving up the search at last,
she, the quietest and most bashful of the lot, was being initiated into
the mysteries of "what life is."

Down Bourbon Street and on Toulouse and St. Peter Streets there are
quaint little old-world places where one may be disguised effectually
for a tiny consideration. Thither, guided by the shapely Mephisto and
guarded by the team of jockeys and ballet girls, tripped Flo. Into one
of the lowest-ceiled, dingiest, and most ancient-looking of these shops
they stepped.

"A disguise for the demoiselle," announced Mephisto to the woman who
met them. She was small and wizened and old, with yellow, flabby jaws,
a neck like the throat of an alligator, and straight, white hair that
stood from her head uncannily stiff.

"But the demoiselle wishes to appear a boy, un petit garcon?" she
inquired, gazing eagerly at Flo's long, slender frame. Her voice was
old and thin, like the high quavering of an imperfect tuning-fork, and
her eyes were sharp as talons in their grasping glance.

"Mademoiselle does not wish such a costume," gruffly responded Mephisto.

"Ma foi, there is no other," said the ancient, shrugging her shoulders.
"But one is left now; mademoiselle would make a fine troubadour."

"Flo," said Mephisto, "it's a dare-devil scheme, try it; no one will
ever know it but us, and we'll die before we tell. Besides, we must;
it's late, and you couldn't find your crowd."

And that was why you might have seen a Mephisto and a slender
troubadour of lovely form, with mandolin flung across his shoulder,
followed by a bevy of jockeys and ballet girls, laughing and singing as
they swept down Rampart Street.

When the flash and glare and brilliancy of Canal Street have palled
upon the tired eye, when it is yet too soon to go home to such a
prosaic thing as dinner, and one still wishes for novelty, then it is
wise to go into the lower districts. There is fantasy and fancy and
grotesqueness run wild in the costuming and the behaviour of the
maskers. Such dances and whoops and leaps as these hideous Indians and
devils do indulge in; such wild curvetings and long walks! In the open
squares, where whole groups do congregate, it is wonderfully amusing.
Then, too, there is a ball in every available hall, a delirious ball,
where one may dance all day for ten cents; dance and grow mad for joy,
and never know who were your companions, and be yourself unknown. And
in the exhilaration