The young fellows--English, American, or of whatever other
nationality--would stride up and down the overflowing street hour
after hour, clad in linen dust-coats down to their heels, with a bag
of confetti slung on one side and another full of bouquets on the
other; and they would plunge a warlike hand into the former and hurl
ammunition at their rivals; or they would, pick out a bunch of flowers
from the latter for a pretty girl--not that the flowers were worth
anything intrinsically, nor was that their fault--but just to show the
fitting sentiment. There was only one rule, the unwritten one that
everybody was to take everything that came with a smile or a laugh,
and never get angry at anything; and this universal good-humor lifted
the whole affair into a wholesome and profitable sphere. Then there
was the double row of carriages forever moving in opposite directions,
and passing within easy arm's-reach of each other; and the jolly
battle was waged between their occupants, with side conflicts with the
foot-farers at the same time. And as the same carriages would repass
one another every forty minutes or so, the persons in them would soon
get to recognize one another; and, if they were of the sterner sex,
they would be prepared to renew desperate battle; or if there was a
pretty girl or two in one of them, she would be the recipient of a
deluge of flowers or of really pretty bonbons. It was all play, all
laughter, all a new, rollicking world of happy fools, of comic
chivalry, of humorous gallantry.
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