It was a reverie of the kind that everyone, and especially everyone's wife, admits to be mawkish and unprofitable; and yet, somehow, the next still summer night, or long sleepy Sunday afternoon, or, perhaps, some cheap, jigging and heartbreaking melody, will set a carnival of old loves and old faces awhirl in the brain.

'They are spirits of the bog, myths, that hold their carnival in the early grass of the marshy pools,' says the theorist and poet, who believes in the idealities of a poetic fancy.

We are always in the Carnival at Venice; and he who would buy, or he who would sell, has the same right to hide his face as to hide his thoughts.

We could hear distinctly the shouts of the scoundrels, and pictured to ourselves the black wretches holding high carnival among the burning buildings and laughing at the white soldiers, who, with arms in their hands, remained motionless in their own lines.

There was a struggle among the lesser craft to draw closer to this dramatic centre; they jostled each other unceremoniously; a splash, like a falling oar, was heard, but scarce noted in the absorbing interest of the moment; only a bare-legged boy jumped off from a tiny fishing-skiff near which the oar had floated, and swam with it to to the gondola from which it had fallensince it was this boat which was making the carnival for them!

As if (I remember thinking) some monstrous giant had been holding mad carnival with itself at the end of that great passage.

The birds held high carnival around him,nesting in the large cherry tree, playing hide and seek among the fragrant apple blossoms and making the air melodious with their merry songs.

A carnival like that in America would end in a fight, if not in murder, for the American loses sight of the fact that it is simply rude play, and when he sees a handful of coloured paper flung in his wife's face, it might as well be water or pebbles for the stirring effect it has on his fighting blood.

Coaches plied from Westminster to the Temple, as in the streets; sleds, sliding with skates, bull-baiting, horse and coach races, puppet plays, cooks, tippling, so that it seemed to be a carnival on the water; while it was a severe judgement on the land, the trees splitting, men and cattle perishing, and the very seas locked up with ice.

This day is a sort of carnival to these people, who are ever on the qui vive for occasions "to ask an alms."