At last, one morning when the whole world seemed glad that it was beginning and seemed to long to tell about it, little Peter entered a city, decorated for a festival. Everywhere were garlands of vines and of roses, bright rugs and fluttering pennons and gilded things, as if the world had been long enough begun so that already there were time to take holidays. The people were flooding the streets and crowding the windows, and through their holiday dress Peter could see how some minced and mocked a little like apes, and others peered about like giraffes, and others ravened for food and joy, like the beggar or the bear or the tiger, and others kept the best, like swine, or skulked like curs, or plodded like horses, or prattled like parrots. Animals ran about, dumb like the vegetables they had eaten. Vegetables were heaped in the stalls, mysterious as the earth which they had lately been. The buildings were piled up to resemble the hills from whose substance they had been created, and their pillars were fashioned like trees. Everywhere were the savage angles and wild lines of one thing turning into another. And Peter longed to help to fashion them all, as he fashioned his little balls of mould and loam. “There is so much yet to do,” thought little Peter, “I wonder that they take so much time for holidays.” So he ran quickly to a high, white place in the midst of the town, where they were making ready to erect the throne of the king of the carnival, and on that he stood and cried:-- “Hear me--hear me! The world is beginning. You must go and help the king.” Now, if those about the carnival throne had only said: “What is that to us? Go away!” Peter would have been warned. But they only nodded, and they said kindly: “Yes, so it is--and we mean to help presently. Come and help us first!” And one of the revellers, seeing Peter, how little he was, picked him up and held him at arm’s length and cried:-- “Lo, now, this little lad. He is no bigger than a trumpet....” (That was what the king had said, and it pleased Peter to hear it said again.) “... Let us take him,” the revellers went on, “and _have_ him for a trumpet. And take him with us in our great procession. What think ye?” “And may I cry out what message I please?” little Peter asked eagerly. “Surely,” answered all the revellers, gayly. “What is that to us, so that you come with us?” They picked him up and tossed him on their shoulders--for he was of about a brazen trumpet’s weight, no more;--and Peter clapped his hands for joy, for he was a boy and he loved to think that he would be a part of that gorgeous procession. And they took him away to the great tent on the city green where everyone was dressing for the carnival.