RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
with other lines as far as the eye could see in both directions. The whole Palace building was outlined in electric lights, while the great trees and every little bush were wired and strung with a myriad multicoloured globes, hundreds of them covered with Japanese lanterns in fantastic colours and designs. All the garden walks and drives were bordered with tiny coloured lamps burning cocoanut oil, set close in against the well trimmed lawns, and when it was all finished and the light turned on the place was like a fairyland.
The date for the Carnival was set for full moon night, the third of December, and never will I forget the brilliance and beauty of the scene as one gay and picturesque barge or improvised gondola after another, full of laughing, chattering and singing people in masks and all manner of strange costumes, and with mandolins and guitars playing, floated up under the bright canopy of swinging globes, a million times reflected in the ripples of the river, to the ancient-looking, moss-grown landing where Mr. Taft and I, as the Doge of Venice and his Lady, stood receiving our guests with as much mock stateliness as we could command in the midst of such a merry throng. It will linger in my memory always as one of the most entrancing evenings of my life.
Rain was predicted, as usually happens when I give any kind of a garden party, and all day long I had watched the clouds with a feeling of helpless exasperation. I wanted fair weather; I wanted the moonlight; but as night came on lowering grey canopy seemed to float upward and spread itself out into a mere haze which softened and diffused the brightness and made ten times more effective our myriad swinging lamps and lanterns.
Everybody had done his or her utmost in the matter of costuming, and with a success that I never saw surpassed. All the fine old collections of jewels in the rich Spanish and Filipino families were taken out, and in many cases made
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