Violets and Other Tales

								

you're wasting time in that tame gang. Slip off, they'll never miss
you; we'll get you a rig, and show you what life is."
And so it happened that when a half hour passed, and the bright-eyed
bevy missed Flo and couldn't find her, wisely giving up the search at
last, that 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
disguise shops they stopped.
"A disguise for this demoiselle," announced Mephisto to the woman who
met them. She was small and wizened and old, with yellow, flabby jaws
and 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, and it is yet too soon to go home, and to such a prosaic
thing as dinner, and one still wishes for novelty, then it is wise to go
in the lower districts. Fantasy and fancy and grotesqueness in the
costuming and behavior of the maskers run wild. Such dances and whoops
and leaps as these hideous Indians and devils do indulge in; such wild
curvetings and great walks. And 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 of the day,
one walks miles and miles, and dances and curvets, and the fatigue is
never felt.
In Washington Square, away down where Royal Street empties its stream
of children and men into the broad channel of Elysian Fields Avenue,