formed in their turn on each side of the boys--and then the procession
started; walking briskly up and down, and in and out, and round and
round the same streets, over and over again; the musicians playing on
all their instruments at once (drum included), without a moment's
intermission on the part of any one of them. Nothing could exceed the
gravity and silence of the popular concourse which followed this
grotesque procession. The solemn composure on the countenances of the
two corpulent civil officers who went before it, was reflected on the
features of the smallest boy who followed humbly behind. Profound
musical amateurs in attendance at a classical quartet concert, could
have exhibited no graver or more breathless attention than that
displayed by the inhabitants of Fowey, as they marched at the heels of
the peripatetic town band.

But, while the music was proceeding, another adjunct to the dignity of
the festival was in course of preparation, which appealed more strongly
to popular sympathy even than the band and procession. A quantity of
young trees--miserable little saplings cut short in their early
infancy--were brought into the town, curiously sharpened at the stems.
Holes were rapidly drilled in the ground, here, there, and everywhere,
for their reception, at corners of house walls. While men outside set
them up, women in a high state of excitement appeared at first-floor
windows with long pieces of string, which they fastened to the branches
to steady the trees at the top, hauling them about this way and that
most unmercifully during the operation, and then vanishing to tie the
loose ends of the lines to bars of grates and legs of tables. Mazes of
long tight strings ran all across our room at the inn; broken twigs and
drooping leaves peered in sadly at us through the three windows that
lighted it. We were driven about from corner to corner out of the way of
this rigging by an imperious old woman, who fastened and fettered the
wretched trees with as fierce an air as if they were criminals whom she
was handcuffing, and who at last fairly told us that she thought we had
better leave the room, and see how beautiful things looked from the
outside. On obeying this intimation, we found that the trees had
absorbed the whole public attention to themselves. The band marched by,
playing furiously; but the boys deserted it. The people from the
country, hastening into the town, hot and eager, paused, reckless of the
music