The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1880-04-29

q
fete. Go to that of st. Cloud, just
without the walls of Paris, the biggest
OF them all. Go on q Sunday and see
10000 or 100000 people enjoying
themselves in their simple, childish
fashion. and not an arrest or knock
down. See the mile and half of
gaudy booths in the grand park, ter
minating with five or six travelling
theaters. whose companies, in full
dress kings, queens, clowns and court
lers. range themselves before the pub.
lie on the outer gallery at the close of
each performance. And the blowing
OF horns and beating of drums; the
free comedies enacted on the theater
balconies to tempt the crowd within:
the tombolas," or gimcrack lotteries,
with their Gathering wheels and worth
less prizes; the palatial merry-po-
rounds, twO-storied, CAV with mirrors,
silken curtains and gliding, with half a
hundred children and grave old people
riding on the backs OF wooden lions.
tigers, deer and stranger beasts un-
known to the naturalist. Here appar-
emily are all the giant women and men
on exhibition in France, and voluptuous
girls in tights and the shortest Of red
tunics, pacing in front of the booth of
the giantess. expatiating on the over
grown female monstrosity within.
Here the gingerbread lottery-man
fishes over the head of the crowd with
pole and line, having for bait bit of
his stale cake, enticing the peasant
boys to snap it up in their teeth, and
chattering in voluble anger when one
grabs it 10 his dirty little fist and runs
of: The French fete apparently never
ends, and the sports seem always in
charge of the same people, who travel
with their vans from place to place.
1t is advertised one week for Boulogne,
the Partisan suburb, and the next at
St. Cloud. Now, Boulogne and St.
Cloud are only apart the width of a
short bridge. So the fete of St. Cloud
is simply transfer of all the portable
theaters, shooting-galleries, giants,
giantesses. fortune-tellers, merry 60
rounds, swings, tombolas. stale pastry,
axle-grease cakes, bag and baggage, to
the other side of the river. Next week,
fete at Moudon. Moudon is the village
just below Sevres. Down goes the
same fete to Moudon. And SO on for
all the suburban villages about Paris.
suppose each of these villages owns
the slender barber-poles and colored-
glass cups whereby the streets are IL
Illuminated at night during the fete; but
they may lend these to each other.
So the fete is kept on its travels, and
every Saturday the Paris papers adver-
tise "Fete at st. Cloud" or Boulogne
or Cl;chy, or dozen other places. Also,
grand review of pompiers'' (firemen).
This is one regular feature of the fete.
If an American fails to get any fun from
the rest of the fete, those French fire.
men will fetch him, with their garden
squirts on hand-cart, big brass he'll
NETS and bugles and endless kits of
tools. They drill after the fashion of
serving a piece of artillery, and such
drill at these fetes in competitive.
When they rush that hand-cart up to
the supposed fire, tip it up, take the en-
CINE of, lay it on the ground and
"shake her up furiously with two men
at the brakes, while the rest of the
pompiers'' stand about erect and mo-
tionless like so many clothing-stor
dummies, you begin to long for Yam
kee steamer to turn its hose on forty or
fifty of these squirts and wash them
down the gutter. When the two "pom-
PIERS cease pumping they break short
off, turn into dummies. two others lift
the engine on the hand-cart, third
rushes the garden-hose into its place. a
fourth chucks the axes and other tools
into the box behind the squirt, and at
the bugle sound the whole company
man the ropes and trot off as if they had
really done something. How they ever
get water higher than the second story
is mystery.
Every third male Frenchman you
meet buys a paper horn and sings
through it. I am certain I heard 1O,-
600 Gauls footing at once in St. Cloud.
My lodgings were on the road to Paris,
and they kent this up until two a. m.
Monday morning. And the cakes they
bake for you on hot griddles at those
fetes! Thin as a wafer, beautiful to the
sight, to the taste compound of sour
ness, bitterness, rancid butter and a
suspicion of axle-grease. And the
stands of fried potatoes, so artistically
fried, so full of grease, SO heavy on the
human stomach. Then that beautiful
Chinaware displayed at the tombola
lotteries. You may always win
something at these crockery lot
teries, generally a farthing's worth
of trumpery on an outlay of six
pence, but never any of the more val
liable prizes. Nor do l believe that any
body ever does win them. There are
portable airgun shooting galleries offer
ing chickens, turkeys, geese, ducks and
rabbits as prizes. Now, some of these
turkeys and geese have been offered
so long, and are so accustomed to
their situation, that at night in
the glare of the lights and amid all the
clatter, chatter and confusion about
them, they will as calmly go to roost as
though in the privacy and retirement of
their native barnyards. You can't win
those fowl, no matter now many bull s.
eyes you hit. They are simply offered,
but never won. Another penny attrac-
ton is train of miniature cars, loco
motive and all, which putfs around q
circular track. The fortune-tellers and
mountebank quacks, clairvoyant and
reputed magnetic healers travel in
portable houses on wheels, and at the
fete, the front door being open, you
may see within the imposing bed and
snowy pillows whereon Madame sleeps,
| while behind, in his portable stable,
stands the family horse. Indeed, the
whole ssfete materier' seems peculiar
class of people wandering over the
country and concentrating at these
merry :makings. Some shows run d
whole company of life-size automaton
figures outside by steam, like that illus
trative of Jules Verne's "Tour of the
| World in Eighty Days." which ut the
fete is performed in much less than
eighty minutes, and then the steamer
bell rings, the paddles revolve, the real
engine works and the French "Dun-
dreary," Englishmen and other auto.
maton characters grimace mechanically.
If you want horse race at the French
fete you may have one for u penny. but
horses and riders are of iron and revolve
in circle. There is the car holding
half dozen which slides down one set
of inclined rails and by its momentum
up another, and while doing this re-
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