Besides the interest and fatigues of the exposition and the constant receiving and official festivities of all kinds, a great event was looming before usthe Berlin Congress.

" CHAPTER III THE HOUSE "OVER THE WATER" The Mediterranean Squadron, that magnificent display of naval force that is the guarantee of peace in Europe, after a week of gay festivities in Leghorn, had sailed for Gaeta, while I, glad to escape from the glaring heat, found myself back once more in dear old London.

He kept up festivities at Singanfoo for several weeks, and on one of these occasions he exclaimed: "To-day I feel I am emperor and perceive all the difference between a subject and his master.

" This concluded the interesting ceremony, which was followed by the usual festivities on such occasions.

Most of them were of the ordinary character, there being a sort of established routine of festivity for such occasions.

They may be days of jovial festivity to Jews, but certainly they are days of labour and annoyance to Gentiles.

When the earth is at the full, which is their midnight, it is also a season of great festivity with them.

In this manner an hour or two passed swiftly, they who were charged with the care of the jolly party in the town-house being much more occupied in noting the festivities without, than those within, the prison.

A ship had recently arrived from England bringing him a box of gowns and gewgaws ordered long since for his wife, and of these Gulian had made Clarissa happy by bidding her bestow on Betty a gown such as he considered fitting for a grand festivity like the De Lanceys' New Year ball.

It was the time of the flowering of the vine, a season of great festivity amongst the Ionian Greeks, and Marseilles thought solely of the preparations for the feast.

" Cordelia lay very still, but the thought of Susie's missing the festivities by staying in the big building in the mission pasture, where the Indian visitors camped in winter, was put from her in short order.

The expression chapeau de fleurs (hat of flowers), which continually occurs in ancient works, did not mean any form of hat, but simply a coronet of forget-me-nots or roses, which was an indispensable part of dress for balls or festivities down to the reign of Philippe de Valois (1347).

Out into the hall they dashed swiftly and silently, past the lanterns on the broad piazza; and as luck had it, Pompey himself, who had come up to witness the festivities from the outside, popped up at the steps.

I've been here three days and seen nobody; the population (chiefly Catholic) consists of three goats, a cock and hen, and a small lake!" Here lifting up her head as she passed by John's gate, Emily observed extraordinary signs of festivity about the place.

He and his mother would no more have dreamed of discontinuing the festivity than of foregoing their Christmas dinner, and the Roses of Wardenhurst were invariably invited and as invariably attended it.

Now this was written just fifty-three years ago, and as all the causes assigned for the declension of this grand national festivity up to that period are incontrovertible, and have been operating even more powerfully ever since, they will sufficiently account for the still greater declension observable in our days.