good-looking." The serpentin about her head is the "feather in her
cap" of the Belgian maiden on Carnival Day. Coming suddenly round
the corner I almost ran into a girl. Her back was towards me. It
was a quiet street. She had half a dozen of these serpentins.
Hurriedly, with trembling hands, she was twisting them round and
round her own head. I looked at her as I passed. She flushed
scarlet. Poor little snub-nosed pasty-faced woman! I wish she had
not seen me. I could have bought sixpenny-worth, followed her, and
tormented her with them; while she would have pretended indignation--
sought, discreetly, to escape from me.

Down South, where the blood flows quicker, King Carnival is, indeed,
a jolly old soul. In Munich he reigns for six weeks, the end coming
with a mad two days revel in the streets. During the whole of the
period, folks in ordinary, every-day costume are regarded as
curiosities; people wonder what they are up to. From the Grafin to
the Dienstmadchen, from the Herr Professor to the "Piccolo," as they
term the small artist that answers to our page boy, the business of
Munich is dancing, somewhere, somehow, in a fancy costume. Every
theatre clears away the stage, every cafe crowds its chairs and
tables into corners, the very streets are cleared for dancing.
Munich goes mad.

Munich is always a little mad. The maddest ball I ever danced at was
in Munich. I went there with a Harvard University professor. He had
been told what these balls were like. Ever seeking knowledge of all
things, he determined to take the matter up for himself and examine
it. The writer also must ever be learning. I agreed to accompany
him. We had not intended to dance. Our idea was that we could be
indulgent spectators, regarding from some coign of vantage the antics