shifts and changes and passes kaleidoscope-like before the
bewildered eye.

A bevy of bright-eyed girls and boys of that uncertain age that
hovers between childhood and maturity, were moving down Canal
Street when there was a sudden jostle with another crowd meeting
them. For a minute there was a deafening clamour of shouts and
laughter, cracking of the whips, which all maskers carry, a
jingle and clatter of carnival bells, and the masked and unmasked
extricated themselves and moved from each other's paths. But in
the confusion a tall Prince of Darkness had whispered to one of
the girls in the unmasked crowd: "You'd better come with us, Flo;
you're wasting time in that tame gang. Slip off, they'll
never miss you; we'll get you a rig, and show you what life is."

And so it happened, when a half-hour passed, and the bright-eyed
bevy missed Flo and couldn't find her, wisely giving up the
search at last, she, the quietest and most bashful of the lot,
was being initiated into the mysteries of "what life is."

Down Bourbon Street and on Toulouse and St. Peter Streets there
are quaint little old-world places where one may be disguised
effectually for a tiny consideration. Thither, guided by the
shapely Mephisto and guarded by the team of jockeys and ballet
girls, tripped Flo. Into one of the lowest-ceiled, dingiest, and
most ancient-looking of these shops they stepped.

"A disguise for the demoiselle," announced Mephisto to the woman
who met them. She was small and wizened and old, with yellow,
flabby jaws, a neck like the throat of an alligator, and