112 ST. LOUIS HOTEL. [CHAP. XXVI. 



full, we obtained agreeable apartments at the St. 

 Louis, in a part of the town where we heard French 

 constantly spoken. Our rooms were fitted up in the 

 French style, with muslin curtains and scarlet dra 

 peries. There was a finely proportioned drawing- 

 room, furnished a la Louis Quatorze, opening into 

 a large dining-room with sliding doors, where the 

 boarders and the &quot; transient visitors,&quot; as they are 

 called in the United States, met at meals. The 

 mistress of the hotel, a widow, presided at dinner, 

 and we talked French with her and some of the at 

 tendants ; but most of the servants of the house were 

 Irish or German. There was a beautiful ball-room, 

 in which preparations were making for a grand 

 masked ball, to be given the night after our arrival. 



It was the last day of the Carnival. From the 

 time we landed in New England to this hour, we 

 seemed to have been in a country where all, w r hether 

 rich or poor, were labouring from morning till night, 

 without ever indulging in a holiday. I had some 

 times thought that the national motto should be 

 &quot; All work and no play.&quot; It was quite a novelty 

 and a refreshing sight to see a whole population 

 giving up their minds for a short season to amuse 

 ment. There was a grand procession parading the 

 streets, almost every one dressed in the most gro 

 tesque attire, troops of them on horseback, some in 

 open carriages, with bands of music, and in a variety 

 of costumes, some as Indians, with feathers in 

 their heads, and one, a jolly fat man, as Mardi Gras 

 himself. All wore masks, and here and there in the 

 crowd, or stationed in a balcony above, we saw per- 



