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50
NEW ORLEANS ILLUSTRATED.
The last decoration day brought to life a spirit of friendship of a true soldierly character—the blue and the grey commingling.
The Veterans of the Army of Northern Virginia, the Orleans Battalion of Artillery and the Continental Guards, presented with the Veterans of Mexico, a soldier’s tribute to the memory of the dead Heroes, who rest beneath the green , ,	mounds of Jackson’s celebrated battle-
Receiving \ ault at Cnalmette Cemetery.	~
WE have often heard it remarked, by those who devote all their time and energies to the acquirement of the almighty dollar, that *‘Xew Orleans has more holidays than any other city in the Union.” This is very true, and they might as truthfully add: “And its people enter into their observance with a greater vim and zest, than would any other community on the continent.”
If ever any of our celebrations have lacked in enthusiasm, or been postponed, or omitted altogether, business has not seemed to gain any by the circumstance, and soon, even the most matter of fact of our citizens, began to reason that there “ is a time for laughter,” which should be improved and enjoyed—proving that
“ A little folly, now and then,
Is relished by the wisest men.”
The greatest of our fetes—the one that has attracted most attention at home and abroad—is that one best known by its French name,
MARDI GRAS,
or Fat Tuesday, the day preceding Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent—a season which is kept very strictly by our Catholic and Episcopalian citizens, aud is, in some degree, observed by certain other Christian denominations.
This ancient holiday is now famous throughout the length and breadth of the land. Its observance in Xew Orleans, as a day of “ masking and makiug gay,” is a custom we owe to the chivalrous knights and gentlemen who founded our city; and to the real Orleanian, it is dear as one of the most cherished usages of his ancestors.
It would be impossible, in a work like this, to give even a faint idea of how Mardi Gras is kept in the Crescent City. It is a day of general hilarity, pomp, pleasure and display; the culmination of months of thought and planning; of artists’working and inventing; modistes’thoughtful ingenuity and devising; of