Fairyland never emerged from old sheds, a King may not even dream of a _costumier_. From thin air, from the seventh sense, the land of the Mysterious, this King and Queen and all their cavalcade. Then, too, the Royal Palace--the historic French Opera House floored and transformed for a night. More lights, more color, the culinary products of the best chefs of all the land working under a stupendous energy, music, dancing, white shirts, white shoulders, gayety, beauty--for tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, and Catholic New Orleans takes its Lent as seriously as it gaily takes the joyousness of its carnivals. * * * * * For three-quarters of a century these carnivals have been the outspoken frivols of the old French lady by the bend of the yellow river. In all that time the carnival has progressed until it today is the outward expression of the joyousness of a joyous city. In all that time did we say? There was an interregnum--the Four Years. In the Four Years the little French restaurants were closed, the lights at the Opera extinguished--there could be no Carnival, for Tragedy sat upon the Southland. And in a great house in Lafayette square there sat a man from Massachusetts who ruled with more zeal than kindness. And that man New Orleans has not forgotten--not even in the half-century that has all but healed the sores of the Four Years. "It is funny," you begin, "that New Orleans should make so much of the Boston Club, when Butler came from--" It is not funny. You saw the Boston Club which vies for social supremacy in the old French city with the Pickwick Club, there in Canal street, at least you saw its fine old white house in that broad thoroughfare. It is not funny. Your New Orleans man tells you--courteously but clearly. "We named our club from that game," he says. "Boston was a fine game, sir," he adds. "And that without ever a thought of that town up in Massachusetts." * * * * * From a carnival to a graveyard is a far cry indeed, and yet the cemeteries of New Orleans are as distinctive of her as her Mardi Gras festivities. We have spoken of the river and the great part it has played in the history of the city that rests so close to its treacherous shore. And it is that very treacherous shore that makes it so exceedingly difficult to arrange a cemetery in the soft and marshy soil on which the city is built. So it is that the New Orleans' cemeteries are veritable cities of the dead. For the bodies that are buried within them are placed above the ground, not under them. Tombs and mausoleums are the rule, not the exception, and where a family is not prosperous enough to own even the simplest of tombs, it will probably join with other families or with some association in the ownership of a house in the city of the dead. And for those who have not even this opportunity there are the ovens.