tarletan fogs, behind which they concocted angels' wings, newspaper
gowns, Minnehaha's wampum, and Cinderella's slippers. Inspired but
incapable boys undertook designs that would have daunted a costumer
of the first water, fell into sloughs of despond, and, emerging,
settled down from peers and paladins into jovial tars, friar
waterproofs, and officers in miscellaneous uniforms. Fathers laughed
or grumbled at the whole thing and advanced pecuniary loans with
good or ill grace, as the case might be; but the mothers, whose
interest in their children's pleasure is a sort of evergreen that no
snows of time can kill, sewed spangles by the bushel, made
wildernesses of tissue-paper blossom as the rose, kept tempers
sweet, stomachs full, and domestic machinery working smoothly
through it all, by that maternal magic which makes them the human
providences of this naughty world.

"What shall I go as?" was the universal cry. Garrets were taken by
storm, cherished relics were teased out of old ladies' lavendered
chests (happy she who saw them again!), hats were made into boots,
gowns into doublets, cloaks into hose, Sunday bonnets despoiled of
their plumage, silken cauliflowers sown broadcast over the land, and
cocked-up caps erected in every style of architecture, while "Tag,
Rag, and Bobtail" drove a smashing business, and everybody knew what
everybody else was going to be, and solemnly vowed they
didn't--which transparent falsehood was the best joke of the whole.

Dolly allowed her mates to believe she was to be the Queen of
Hearts, but privately laid hold of certain brocades worn by a trim
grandmother half a century ago, and one evening burst upon her
brother in a charming "Little Bo-Peep" costume, which, for the
benefit of future distressed damsels, may be described as a "white