At last, the great house having been completed, and he himself having entered into it and furnished it to his satisfaction, our Captain presently began entertaining his friends therein with a profuseness of expenditure and an excess of extravagance that were the continued admiration of the whole colony.

The profuseness with which flowers were used in Rome during triumphal processions has long ago become proverbial, in allusion to which Macaulay says: "On they ride to the Forum, While laurel boughs, and flowers, From house-tops and from windows, Fell on their crests in showers.