CHAP. XXVI. J NEW ORLEANS. 91 



The largest of the hotels, the St. Charles, being fuL, we ob 

 tained 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 draperies. 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 attendants ; but most 

 of the servants of the house were Trish 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, whether rich or poor, were laboring from 

 morning till night, without ever indulging in a holiday. I had 

 sometimes 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 amusement. There was a grand procession parading the 

 streets, almost every one dressed in the most grotesque 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 persons armed with bags 

 of flour, which they showered down copiously on any one who 

 seemed particularly proud of his attire. The strangeness of the 

 scene was not a little heightened by the blending of negroes, 

 quadroons, and mulattoes in the crowd ; and we were amused 

 by observing the ludicrous surprise, mixed with contempt, of 

 several unmasked, stiff, grave Anglo-Americans from the north, 

 who were witnessing for the first time what seemed to them so 

 much mummery and torn-foolery. One wagoner, coming out of 

 a cross street, in his working-dress, drove his team of horses and 

 vehicle heavily laden with cotton bales right through the proces- 



