Many and many a party of young ladies and gentlemen had their state gondolas handsomely decorated, and ate supper on board, bringing their swallow-tailed, white-cravatted varlets to wait upon them, and having their tables tricked out as if for a bridal supper.

They had brought along the costly globe lamps from their drawing-rooms, and the lace and silken curtains from the same places, I suppose.

And they had also brought pianos and guitars, and they played and sang operas, while the plebeian paper-lanterned gondolas from the suburbs and the back alleys crowded around to stare and listen.
There was music every where--choruses, string bands, brass bands, flutes, every thing.

I was so surrounded, walled in, with music, magnificence and loveliness, that I became inspired with the spirit of the scene, and sang one tune myself.

However, when I observed that the other gondolas had sailed away, and my gondolier was preparing to go overboard, I stopped.
The fete was magnificent.