Of the balls which succeed carnivals in the cities which delight in these temporary divorces from the cares of business and finance, pages might be written.  One ball only need be mentioned in any detail.  This is the ball given by the “Knights of Revelry,” in connection with and at the expense of the Mobile clubs.  The entire theatre was rearranged in illustration of the theme of the club’s pageant for the year.  All around the halls were hung tapestries and banners, artistically decorated, and arranged so as to convey the idea of forests and gardens.  The very doors were converted into mimic entrances to caves and parterres, and the general effect was entrancing as well as sentimental.  The band was hidden from the guests in a most delightfully arranged little Swiss chalet, and refreshments were served from miniature garden pavilions.  The very floors upon which the dancing was to take place were decorated so as to present the appearance of a newly mown lawn.

The height of realism was attained by means of an imitation moat over the orchestra well.  Across this was a drawbridge, which was raised and dropped at fitting intervals, and the drop curtain was made to represent a massive castle door.  There was a banquet chamber, with faultless reproductions of mediaeval grandeur and wonder.  Stained glass windows represented well-known and attractive ladies, and there were other marvelous and costly innovations which seemed practically impossible within a theatre.

At this ball, as at all others, the revelry proceeded until midnight.  Just as Cinderella left the ball when the clock struck 12, so do the holders of the Creole revels stop dancing immediately that Lent has commenced.  The next day all is over.  Men who the night before were the leaders in the masquerade, resume their commonplace existence, and are seen at the ordinary seats of custom, buying and selling and conducting themselves like Eastern rather than Southern men.

The carnival idea has not been confined to strictly Southern cities.  St. Louis has, for many years in succession, enjoyed the pageants and balls of its Veiled Prophets, an organization as secret and mysterious as any to be found in a Creole section.  Instead of being a Mardi Gras celebration, the St. Louis pageant is given during the Indian summer days of the first week of October.  The parade takes place after night-fall, and consists of very costly pageants and displays.  It is no exaggeration to say that hundreds of thousands of dollars have been spent in illuminating the streets through which the processions have passed, the money for this purpose being freely subscribed by business men and private citizens.  But in St. Louis, as in New Orleans, no one knows who finds the money to pay for the preparation of the pageant, the rich and varied costumes, the exquisite invitations and souvenirs, and the gorgeous balls.  Readers of the “Pickwick Papers” will remember that when certain members of the club proposed to