Passing between the brilliantly illuminated flag-draped buildings, under festoons of colored electric lights, the street parades, with their spectacular colored floats, their bands, their negro torch-bearers, their strangely costumed masked figures, throwing favors into the dense crowds, are glorious sights for children ranging anywhere from eight to eighty years of age.  Public masking on the streets, on the day of Mardi Gras, is also an amusing feature of the carnival.

The balls, upon the other hand, are social events of great importance in the city, and as spectacles they are peculiarly fine.  Invitations to these balls are greatly coveted, and the visitor to the city who would attend them, must exert his “pull” some time in advance.  The invitations, by the way, are not sent by individuals, but by the separate organizations, and even those young ladies who are so fortunate as to have “call-outs”—­cards inclosed with their invitations, indicating that they are to be asked to dance, and may therefore have seats on the ground floor—­are not supposed to know from what man these cards come.  Ladies who have not received call-outs, and gentlemen who are not members of the societies, are packed into the boxes and seats above the parquet floor, and do not go upon the dancing floor until very late in the evening.  Throughout each ball the members of the society giving the ball continue to wear their costumes and their masks, so that ladies, called from their seats to dance, often find themselves treading a measure with some gallant who speaks in a strange assumed voice, striving to maintain the mystery of his identity.  The ladies, upon the other hand, are not in costume and are not masked; about them, there is no more mystery than women always have about them.  After each dance the masker produces a present for his partner—­usually a pretty bit of jewelry.  Etiquette not only allows, but insists, that a woman accept any gift offered to her at a carnival ball, and it is said that by this means many a young gentleman has succeeded in bestowing upon the lady of his heart a piece of jewelry the value of which would make acceptance of the gift impossible under other than carnival conditions.

After the balls many of the younger couples go to the Louisiane and Antoine’s, to continue the dance, and as my room at Antoine’s was directly over one of the dancing rooms of the establishment, I might make a shrewd guess as to how long they stayed up, after my companion and I retired.

Let it not be supposed that we retired early.  I remember well the look of the pale blue dawn of Ash Wednesday morning, and no less do I remember a conversation with a gentleman I met at the Louisiane, just before the dawn broke.  I never saw him before and I have never seen him since; nor do I know his name, or where he came from.  I only know that he was an agreeable, friendly person who did not wish to go to bed.

When I said that I was going home he protested.