to
fill. If you do succeed in tearing yourself away purse-whole, it is
only to fall a victim to some painted fans of so exquisite a make and
decoration that escape short of possession is impossible. Opposed as
stubbornly as you may be to idle purchase at home, here you will find
yourself the prey of an acute case of shopping fever before you know it.
Nor will it be much consolation subsequently to discover that you have
squandered your patrimony upon the most ordinary articles of every-day
use. If in despair you turn for refuge to the booths, you will but
have delivered yourself into the embrace of still more irresistible
fascinations. For the nocturnal squatters are there for the express
purpose of catching the susceptible. The shops were modestly attractive
from their nature, but the booths deliberately make eyes at you, and
with telling effect. The very atmosphere is bewitching. The lurid
smurkiness of the torches lends an appropriate weirdness to the figure
of the uncouthly clad pedlar who, with the politeness of the arch-fiend
himself, displays to an eager group the fatal fascinations of some new
conceit. Here the latest thing in inventions, a gutta-percha rat, which,
for reasons best known to the vender, scampers about squeaking with a
mimicry to shame the original, holds an admiring crowd spellbound with
mingled trepidation and delight. There a native zoetrope, indefatigable
round of pleasure, whose top fashioned after the type of a turbine wheel
enables a candle at the centre ingeniously to supply both illumination
and motive power at the same time, affords to as many as can find room
on its circumference a peep at the composite antics of a consecutively
pictured monkey in the act of jumping a box. Beyond this "wheel of life"
lies spread out on a mat a most happy family of curios, the whole of
which you are quite prepared to purchase en bloc. While a little farther
on stands a flower show which seems to be coyly beckoning to you as the
blossoms nod their heads to an imperceptible breeze. So one attraction
fairly jostles its neighbor for recognition from the gay thousands that
like yourself stroll past in holiday delight. Chattering children in
brilliant colors, voluble women and talkative men in quieter but no less
picturesque costumes, stream on in kaleidoscopic continuity. And you,
carried along by the current, wander thus for miles with the tide of
pleasure-seekers, till, late at night, when at last you turn r