once been white kid gloves, and a blue silk parasol. Dignity! I
have seen the offended barmaid, I have met the chorus girl--not by
appointment, please don't misunderstand me, merely as a spectator--up
the river on Sunday. But never have I witnessed in any human being
so much hauteur to the pound avoir-dupois as was carried through the
streets of Charleroi by that small brat. Companions of other days,
mere vulgar boys and girls, claimed acquaintance with her. She
passed them with a stare of such utter disdain that it sent them
tumbling over one another backwards. By the time they had recovered
themselves sufficiently to think of an old tin kettle lying handy in
the gutter she had turned the corner.

Two miserably clad urchins, unable to scrape together the few sous
necessary for the hire of a rag or two, had nevertheless determined
not to be altogether out of it. They had managed to borrow a couple
of white blouses--not what you would understand by a white blouse,
dear Madame, a dainty thing of frills and laces, but the coarse white
sack the street sweeper wears over his clothes. They had also
borrowed a couple of brooms. Ridiculous little objects they looked,
the tiny head of each showing above the great white shroud as gravely
they walked, the one behind the other, sweeping the mud into the
gutter. They also were of the Carnival, playing at being scavengers.

Another quaint sight I witnessed. The "serpentin" is a feature of
the Belgian Carnival. It is a strip of coloured paper, some dozen
yards long, perhaps. You fling it as you would a lassoo, entangling
the head of some passer-by. Naturally, the object most aimed at by
the Belgian youth is the Belgian maiden. And, naturally also, the
maiden who finds herself most entangled is the maiden who--to use
again the language of the matrimonial advertiser--"is considered