After Candlemas Day comes the Carnival week, which is the week, as you all know, preceding Lent. As a final respite before the forty days of fasting and prayer which will follow so soon, the people allow themselves all sorts of liberties and gayeties. Balls are given, "hunts" are on, and joy reigns supreme, not only in the city, but in the remote country places. Again the manor-house is alive with brilliant lights and many faces. The owners of adjoining estates, with their wives and grown-up sons and daughters, friends of the family, from quite remote parts even, are gathered together for one week of holidays. It is a pleasure to see such wit and beauty gathered together under one roof; for Polish women are almost all handsome, with their soft eyes, their beautiful complexions and their glossy, dark hair. Their manners are a marvel, and their bearing graceful and easy. They are capital company and well informed on all the topics of the day, so that conversation never lags, nor are they obliged to fall back upon the inevitable "cards" for amusement. With them the art of conversation has not died out, nor the art of entertaining. The snow lay thick upon the ground; the branches of the tall fir trees were clothed in a heavy coating of whiteness. The sky overhead was a dull, leaden color; but the guests at the manor-house were pleased with the wintry conditions, for it but aided them in the "hunt" that was "on" that morning. Breakfast finished, a hearty affair of meat, cheese and beverages of various sorts, the sleighs drew up to the portico with boisterous jangling of sleigh-bells and champing of horses' bits; the thoroughbred animals pawing in impatience to be off in the crisp, frosty air. Gay with red tassels, which swept the front dash of the heavy sleighs, and joyful with the chime of the tiny bells, the party drove off to the neighboring woods, where lay, in unconscious innocence of their fate, the fleet deer. The chill of the winter's morning did not affect the spirits of the party in any degree, for they were all snugly wrapped in thick fur robes, and large fur caps completely swathed their heads, so that nothing visible remained of them but their vivacious eyes and their ruddy noses.