merry games died out, and a few years
ago May-day was in London simply the festival of chimney-sweeps and
milk-maids, certainly a falling off from the times of King Henry VIII.
The only traces of the old custom of going a-Maying were the garlands
of the milk-maids and the Jack-in-the-green of the sweeps. The garland
(so called) was made of silver plate, borrowed for the day, and
fastened upon a sort of pyramid. Accompanying this droll garland were
the maids themselves in gay dress, with ribbons and flowers, and
attended by musicians who played for them to dance in the street.
Sometimes a cow was dressed in festive array, with bouquets and ribbons
on her horns, neck and tail, and over her back a net, stuck full of
flowers. Thus highly ornamented, the meek creature was led through the
streets.

The sweeps brought out the Jack-in-the-green, which was a tall cone
made of green boughs, decorated with flowers, gay streamers and a
flag, and carried by a man inside. Each of these structures was
followed by a band of sweeps who assumed certain characters, the
fashion of which had been handed down from the palmy times of May-day.

There were always a lord and lady who wore ridiculous imitations of
fashionable dress, and made ludicrous attempts to imitate elegant
manners. Mad Moll and her husband were another pair who flourished in
tawdry, gay-colored rags, and tatters, he brandishing a sweep's broom
and she a ladle. Jim Crow and a fancifully bedizened ballet-dancer in
white muslin, often swelled the ranks, and the rest of the party rigged
out in a profusion of gilt paper, flowers, tinsel and gewgaws, their
faces and legs colored with brick-dust, made up a comical crowd. But
even these mild remains of the great festival are almost entirely
banished to the rural districts, and are almost extinct there.

Poor Flora! (if there ever was such a person) she has her wish (if that
wish ever existed save in the imagination of the Romans); she is not
forgotten; her story survives in musty books, though her personality be
questioned; various marble statues bear her pretty name, and, after
running this declining scale through the ages, she and her May-day are
softened by time to a fragrant memory.

WILD GEESE.

BY CELIA THAXTER.

The wind blows, the sun shines, the birds sing loud,
The blue, blue sky is flecked with fleecy dappled cloud,
Over earth's rejoicing fields the children dance and sing,
And the frogs pipe in c