at almost hurt when they struck the mark, and in beautiful nosegays,
rarely flung at random when a pretty face was within sight at a window.
The cars, often charmingly decorated, were filled with men and women
representing some period of fashion, or some incident in history, or
some allegorical subject, and were sometimes two or three stories high,
and covered all over with garlands of flowers and box and myrtle. In the
intervals between them endless open carriages moved along, lined with
white, filled with white dominos, drawn by horses all protected and
covered with white cotton robes, against the whiter 'confetti'--everyone
fighting mock battles with everyone else, till it seemed impossible that
anything could be left to throw, and the long perspective of the narrow
street grew dim between the high palaces, and misty and purple in the
evening light.

A gun fired somewhere far away as a signal warned the carriages to turn
out, and make way for the race that was to follow. The last moments were
the hottest and the wildest, as flowers, 'confetti,' sugar plums with
comet-like tails, wreaths, garlands, everything, went flying through the
air in a final and reckless profusion, and as the last car rolled away
the laughter and shouting ceased, and all was hushed in the expectation
of the day's last sight. Again, the clatter of hoofs and scabbards, as
the dragoons cleared the way; twenty thousand heads and necks craning to
look northward, as the people pushed back to the side pavements;
silence, and the inevitable yellow dog that haunts all race-courses,
scampering over the white street, scared by the shouts, and catcalls,
and bursts of spasmodic laughter; then a far sound of flying hoofs, a
dead silence, and the quick breathing of suppressed excitement; louder
and louder the hoofs, deader the hush; and then, in the dash of a
second, in the scud of a storm, in a whirlwind of light and colour and
sparkling gold leaf, with straining necks, and flashing eyes, and wide
red nostrils flecked with foam, the racing colts flew by as fleet as
darting lightning, riderless and swift as rock-swallows by the sea.

Then, if it were the last night of Carnival, as the purple air grew
brown in the dusk, myriads of those wax tapers first used in Saturn's
temple of old lit up the street like magic and the last game of all
began, for every man and woman and child strove to put out another's
candle, and the long, laughing cry, 'No taper! No taper!