Gala

“ In sight of a swooning world.
A call of the soul, and the senses blended;
The Springtime lost in the glow of the sun,
And two lives rushing, as God intended,
To meet and mingle as one.
AUTUMN
The world is out in gala dress ”

“ Daughters and sons, granddaughters and grandsons of pioneers who once made those same walls vibrate with their applause were there for the gala opening of the revival, in dress such as their ancestors wore at the theatre when it was new. ”

“ But when drest for a festive gala occasion, when gay with banners and festoons, in honour of a royal birthday, a royal marriage, the visit of a prince, the announcement of a victory, they shew to special advantage. ”

“ Marrying an heiress accomplishes all this at once—and the young lady is every thing we could wish besides—you will meet again at the gala. Indeed, between ourselves, she is the grand object of the gala—all her friends will come en masse, and one should wish that they should see things in proper style. You have seen the young lady in question, Colambre—Miss Broadhurst—Don’t you recollect the young lady I introduced you to last night after the opera? ”

“ The lads and lassies all appear in their gala costumes; the girls with short, dark skirts, braided with gold or silver, snowy aprons and full white sleeves, bright colored bodices and odd little caps; the boys with knee-breeches, white stockings, low shoes, and scarlet or yellow vests, the solid gold or silver buttons on which are often their whole inheritance. But when they are dancing gayly together on the green, they look a good deal happier than if they were little kings and queens. ”

“ Balls and banquets, church services and gala performances at the theatre, the reception of congratulatory addresses and the taking and receiving of various oaths of allegiance, filled up day after day, and the guests, with an endurance and a politeness only to be found in royal personages, contrived to appear not only tolerant of the rush of uninteresting events, but even pleased with it. ”

“ No marvel why gala spots for pleasure-loving citizens should be found interspersed among the more refined parterres of the wealthy upon the shores; no marvel that a summer’s p. 79evening should witness crowds of holiday-seeking folks, thronging to taste the sweets of fresh air, and rest from labour, in the midst of so fair a scene. ”

“ For example, for every-day wear both sexes choose their plainest suits, and keep them on from morning till night, whether in the field or in the house. The gala costumes are of fine cloth, or still more delicate material, and are donned on feast-days and other great occasions, and once put on are worn all day long, getting covered with dust out of doors, and yet serving for the soirée and the dance. ”

“ On Sundays people dressed in gala attire come from all directions, the men, wearing black leather knee-breeches, the women, padded velvet spencers and droll-looking wired caps, decorated with gilt and ribbons. Their clothing is no longer of home-made material. ”

“ Before the ceremony begins the musicians who are responsible for this primitive harmony are dispatched to summon the guests, who, of course, arrive in the full splendour of the national gala costume. As soon as the ronds are completed to the satisfaction of everybody the custom common to so many countries of stealing the bride away is celebrated. At a given signal she speeds away from the party, hotly pursued by the young gallants present, and when she is overtaken she presents the successful swain with a cup of coffee at a public café. ”

“ It is always employed in ceremonies, [pg 19] religious and secular, and is an accompaniment of gala dress for the purpose of honouring a guest or to celebrate an occasion. The face of the dead was frequently painted in accordance with tribal or religious symbolism. ”

“ First an eclipse, then a book, and yet I pitied the moon as I walked home that night. She came up the heavens so round and radiant, so glorious in her majesty, so confident in her strength, so sure of triumphal march across the shining sky; not knowing that a great black shadow loomed right athwart her path to swallow her up. She never dreamed that all her royal beauty should pass behind a pall, that all her glory should be demeaned by pitiless eclipse, and her dome of delight become the valley of humiliation! Is there no help? I said. Can no hand lead her gently another way? ”

“ It always is Christmas Eve, in a ghost story,
Christmas Eve is the ghosts' great gala night. ”

“ If you go into raptures, it is all the same; you are not watched and made a note of. They leave you at the top of your bent. Whether you shall be amused, delighted, or disgusted, they respect your decisions and allow you to remain free.
How did I go to my concert? Can I tell for the eyes that made "a sunshine in the shady place"? Was I not veiled with the beautiful hair, and blinded with the lily's white splendor? So went I with the Fairy Queen in her golden coach drawn by six white mice, and, behold, I was in Camilla's concert-room.
It is to be a fiddle affair. ”

“ Clouds and vapors and unseen hands of heaven flood the hills with beauty. They have drunk in the warmth and life of the sun, they quiver beneath his burning glance, they lie steeped in color, gorgeous, tremulous, passionate, rosy red dropping away into pale gold, emeralds dim and sullen where they ripple down towards the darkness, dusky browns and broad reaches of blue-black massiveness, till the silent starlight wraps the scene with blessing, and the earth sitteth still and at rest. ”

“ Smooth and far in the tranquil evening-air fall the receding notes, a clear, silvery sweetness; farther and farther in the hushed evening air, lessening and lowering, as you bend to listen, till the vanishing strain just cleaves, a single thread of pearl-pure melody, finer, finer, finer, through the dewy twilight, and—you hear only your own heart-beats. It is not dead, but risen. ”

“ Sad mother, whose rose of life was crushed before it had budded, tender young lips that had drunk the cup of sorrow to the dregs, while their cup of bliss should hardly yet be brimmed for life's sweet springtime, your crumbling fanes and broken arches and prostrate columns lie not among the ruins of Time. ”

“ When the little French girl, a frail wisp of humanity all done in red and gold, came spinning upon the stage to dance before the leering God whose very eyes appeared to gleam with hidden fire, the silence seemed to deepen. ”

“ Quicker and quicker, for minute after minute, grew the dance, swifter and swifter the swing of the light blue drapery as the priestess, with eager face and staring eyes, swung panting round upon her orbit, and redder and redder over the city tops rose the circumference of the earth. ”

“ Later, when the feast is ended, and before the company disperses to walk in the garden if it is spring or summer, or to look at the beautiful things in the castle, or to dance or sing or play chess if it be winter, some one perchance chants a plaintive ditty to the music of the regal, or some knight tunes his harp and sings of valiant deeds, or, may be, of some peerless lady. ”

“ The queen led her into the pavilion, where she saw a table on which a splendid feast was spread. “I do not wish to eat with you,” said Rosa; “I only wish to see if your mirror speaks the truth.”
“Thou canst not eat with us,” said the [Pg 27] queen; “we ask not such as thou to our table. Come, pitiable child! and behold thyself. My mirror shows not the outside, but the inside;” and the queen led Rosa to a crystal basin, wreathed with flowers of many hues, and sending forth the sweetest odors. ”

“ The grandeur and brilliancy of the scene, now that the matchless pageant was complete, beggar all description—the sparkling jewels, the flashing arms and armour, the solemn-visaged Priests, the hosts of white-decked virgins, the flower bearers, the musicians, the soldiers in their many-hued uniforms, the white-bearded Ministers of State, the handsome men and lovely women, the endless officials and attendants—all assisting in making one gorgeous picture, one scene of indescribable beauty, in which the fair and blushing bride shone forth like a peerless pearl in all her maiden loveliness! ”

“ You see them in the streets and cafés, in the topmost gallery at the Opera, and forming enthusiastic groups at all concerts; their shabby velveteens a nice contrast with their vivid, impressionable faces.
During Carnival they are natural leaders in the routs and festivities; this entire season is for them one rollicking fancy-dress ball. They may go hungry, but they can always arrange a new and clever costume; and one meets them coming home arm-in-arm through the dusk, carrying bulky parcels and humming the waltz from the latest operette. ”

“ The midnight feast, the glittering dance!
The wizard harpers play for me,
I wear a crown upon my head,
A princess in eternity,
I dance and revel with the dead . . .
"Vain lies!" I hear the people cry,
I listen to their weary truth ”

“ In her presence the flowers bloom, the dance awakens, the music bursts forth, and troops of devils, nymphs, satyrs, demons, angels, shepherds and shepherdesses, dance, shake their tambourines, and whirl about in rhythmic evolutions, each one placing some tribute at the feet of the goddess. ”

“ They had placed another magic globe under a shroud on a tripod for her. It stood within the charmed circle upon the terrace, and I was close by, although the princess did not see me.
Again that weird, fantastic dance commenced, the princess working herself up from the drowsiest undulations to a hurricane of emotion. Then she stopped close by the orb, and seized the corner of the web covering it. We saw the globe begin to beam with veiled magnificence at her touch. ”

“ THE PRINCESS'S MIRROR
he sun was scarcely risen, but the young princess was already seated by her window. Never did window open upon a scene of such enchantment. Never has the dawn risen over so fair a land. Meadows so fresh and grass so green, rivers of such mystic silver and far mountains so majestically purple, no eye has seen outside of Paradise; and over all was now outspread the fairy-land of the morning sky.
Even a princess might rise early to behold so magic a spectacle. ”

“ A most decorative group is this Feast of the Sacrifice - brute strength and the graceful form of the maid making a splendid play of line that most satisfactorily charms the eye.
The Joy of Living
Paul Manship, Sculptor
With perfect abandon come these maidens into the Court of the Universe, carrying their festoons of wild roses. They bring to the great festival joy and love of life - a telling addition to all that has been expressed in the court. They savor of old Greek days, these maidens of archaic hair and zigzag draperies. ”

“ An invisible hand behind the scene has dropped a shadow over the light of day draped in its brilliant and gorgeous glories. When the curtain rises again, the Queen of Night, more lovely than any queen of kingdoms, arrayed in her robes of royalty—for God has dressed her with the glories of heaven—appears, reflecting her full orb in the water, when an unbroken trail of silvery light apparently connects the two worlds. ”

“ That she is not a professional dancer—just a beautiful girl—adds to the sensuous delight. Quickly the dance is done—and amidst the applause of all the court, and with flushed face, she passes before the king and bows. Drunken with wine and the banquet, the king seizes her hand and offers to reward her with whatever she may wish—if need be, with half his kingdom. ”

“ The perfume of the baskets of flowers, the glitter of the ornaments worn, the brilliancy of the diamonds, mingling with the colours of the floral decorations, and constituting, as it were, ever so many shifting rainbows, the sheen of the golden fruit-baskets—in short, the whole presented the most magnificent sight hitherto witnessed anywhere. The magic of that picture transported the spectator to one of the fairy scenes created by a poetic imagination. During the collation minstrels sang, to the accompaniment of their harps, lays to the beauty of the dames and to the valour of their knights. ”

“ The King's love was still hers as when he found her at dawn by the pool in the forest; and, in exchange for the tattered rags which had barely concealed the water-lily whiteness of her body, countless wardrobes were filled with garments of every variety of subtle design and exquisite fabric, textures light as the golden sun, purple as the wine-dark sea, iridescent as the rainbow, and soft as summer clouds—the better [Pg 43] to set off her strange beauty for the eyes of the King. ”

“ Fans move with an incessant tremulous flutter; there is a continuous susurrus of voices, broken by occasional hoarse bursts of laughter at some mishap, or hoarse roars of welcome as some favourite enters; the regal sun discharges his fierce messages of light from his throne of blue, and the costumes of every colour, wavering with the pulsations of the throng, are an active kaleidoscope, most vivid and variegated. We are in our places. ”

“ A beautiful moon had risen, and was shining, but you could not see her, only the light she shed down from her throne on high through the soft white mist that had risen from the wet ground and was wavering and dancing solemnly to and fro, filling the space between heaven and earth, as if to veil the sacred sights of the Holy Eve from mortal eyes. ”

“ The earth all but covered the little bed of the princess, and it was necessary to lift her from it, which the fairy queen did with her own hands, flashing a reproachful glance at her husband, the king. But when the party had127 trooped away for the dancing,—with the orchestra playing the way a Summer night would sound if it were to steep itself in music, so that it could only be heard and not seen,—then the king came quietly back to the christening chamber and ordered the spadeful of earth to be gathered up and put in a certain part of the palace garden. ”