Such is success in this unequal world; the man who wipes off the grease seldom gets the prize.

Then followed various games, with tubs of water; and coins fastened to the bottom of a huge black frying-pan, to be plucked off with the lips; and pots of flour to be broken with sticks; so that the young lads of the village were ducked and blackened and powdered to an unlimited extent, amid the hilarious applause of the spectators.  In the evening there was more music, and the peasants danced in the square, the women quietly and rather heavily, but the men with amazing agility, slapping the soles of their shoes with their hands, or turning cartwheels in front of their partners.  At dark the festivities closed with a display of fireworks; there were rockets and bombs and pin-wheels; and the boys had tiny red and blue lights which they held until their fingers were burned, just as boys do in America; and there was a general hush of wonder as a particularly brilliant rocket swished into the dark sky; and when it burst into a rain of serpents, the crowd breathed out its delight in a long-drawn “Ah-h-h-h!” just as the crowd does everywhere.  We might easily have imagined ourselves at a Fourth of July celebration in Vermont, if it had not been for the costumes.

The men of the Ampezzo Valley have kept but little that is peculiar in their dress.  Men are naturally more progressive than women, and therefore less picturesque.  The tide of fashion has swept them into the international monotony of coat and vest and trousers—­pretty much the same, and equally ugly, all over the world.  Now and then you may see a short jacket with silver buttons, or a pair of knee-breeches; and almost all the youths wear a bunch of feathers or a tuft of chamois’ hair in their soft green hats.  But the women of the Ampezzo—­strong, comely, with golden brown complexions, and often noble faces—­are not ashamed to dress as their grandmothers did.  They wear a little round black felt hat with rolled rim and two long ribbons hanging down at the back.  Their hair is carefully braided and coiled, and stuck through and through with great silver pins.  A black bodice, fastened with silver clasps, is covered in front with the ends of a brilliant silk kerchief, laid in many folds around the shoulders.  The white shirt-sleeves are very full and fastened up above the elbow with coloured ribbon.  If the weather is cool, the women wear a short black jacket, with satin yoke and high puffed sleeves.  But, whatever the weather may be, they make no change in the large, full dark skirts, almost completely covered with immense silk aprons, by preference light blue.  It is not a remarkably brilliant dress, compared with that which one may still see in some districts of Norway or Sweden, but upon the whole it suits the women of the Ampezzo wonderfully.

For my part, I think that when a woman has found a dress that becomes her, it is a waste of time to send to Paris for a fashion-plate.