handed over to my control, would be the rearrangement of the
Carnival. As matters are, the Carnival takes place all over Europe
in February. At Nice, in Spain, or in Italy, it may be occasionally
possible to feel you want to dance about the streets in thin costume
during February. But in more northern countries during Carnival time
I have seen only one sensible masker; he was a man who had got
himself up as a diver. It was in Antwerp. The rain was pouring down
in torrents; a cheery, boisterous John Bull sort of an east wind was
blustering through the streets at the rate of fifteen miles an hour.
Pierrots, with frozen hands, were blowing blue noses. An elderly
Cupid had borrowed an umbrella from a cafe and was waiting for a
tram. A very little devil was crying with the cold, and wiping his
eyes with the end of his own tail. Every doorway was crowded with
shivering maskers. The diver alone walked erect, the water streaming
from him.

February is not the month for open air masquerading. The "confetti,"
which has come to be nothing but coloured paper cut into small discs,
is a sodden mass. When a lump of it strikes you in the eye, your
instinct is not to laugh gaily, but to find out the man who threw it
and to hit him back. This is not the true spirit of Carnival. The
marvel is that, in spite of the almost invariably adverse weather,
these Carnivals still continue. In Belgium, where Romanism still
remains the dominant religion, Carnival maintains itself stronger
than elsewhere in Northern Europe.

At one small town, Binche, near the French border, it holds
uninterrupted sway for three days and two nights, during which time
the whole of the population, swelled by visitors from twenty miles
round, shouts, romps, eats and drinks and dances. After which the