Strangest, wildest practice of the slaves was the hideous misuse Christian masters allowed them to make of Chrismas Day and week. It was then they danced the bamboula, incessantly. All through the year this Saturnalia was prepared for in meetings held at night by their leaders. The songs to which they danced were made of white society's scandals reduced to satirical rhyme; and to the rashest girl or man there was power in the warning, "You'll get yourself sung about at Christmas." Yearly a king, queen, and retinue were elected. The dresses of court and all were a mixture of splendor and tawdriness that exhausted the savings and pilferings of a twelvemonth. Good-natured "missies" often helped make these outfits. They were of velvet, silk, satin, cotton lace, false flowers, the brilliant seeds of the licorice and coquelicot, tinsel, beads, and pinch-beck. Sometimes mistresses even lent--firmly sewed fast--their own jewelry. On Christmas Eve, here and there in the town, ground-floor rooms were hired and decorated with palm branches; or palm booths were built, decked with oranges and boughs of cinnamon berries, lighted with candles and lanterns and furnished with seats for the king, queen, and musicians, and with buckets of rum punch. Then the "bulrush man" went his round. Covered with capes and flounces of rushes and crowned with a high waving fringe of them, he rattled pebbles in calabashes, danced to their clatter, proclaimed the feast, and begged such of us white children as his dress did not terrify, for stivers from our holiday savings.