The daily morning journal and courier., 1897-04-12
FErE OE nLI-oARnMr.
The Great Mid-Lenten Festival in Gay
 Paris Described.


 Paris, March 26, 1897. To the Editor of the Journal and Courier:
 Yesterday was the fete of Mi-Careme, or Mid-Lent, and a day of carnival in Paris, and coming as it does half way between the gaiety of Mardi-Gras which precedes Lent, and Easter that follows it, Mi-Careme is day of great hilarity. The Catholic church not rec ognizing 1t as a day of public rejoicing there is nothing of the kind in the prov inces, and it Is only at Paris, where Lent is a season not entirely given over to fasting and prayer, that this holiday has become established. From the tllne of the Revolution the washerWomen or Paris have always observed Mid-Lent as their holiday, leaving their washtups and driving in carriages through the streets of the city. The Parisians saw in this procession of washerwomen an occasion for a general holiday, oppor- tunity not to be lost, and now that the students of the Latin Quarter have joined the cavalcade, Mi-Careme has developed into a well established fete day, equal in importance to the famous Mardi- Gras. Any one who has made even a brief stay in Paris cannot have failed to remark the number of small laundries, one or two in every olock, with their windows full of spotless lin- en, freshly ironed, and where through the open door one sees instead of the familiar figure of John Chinaman, the more attractive one of a young French woman, who is deftly plying the nat iron-and then one remembers that 'Trilby' was just such "blanchis- seuse de fin" These, however, are only the places where ironing is done, and the women whose strong arms ana skilled hands restore (with the aid or washing powder) our soiled linen to it's pristine whiteness are to be found only in the great laundries, of which there are several in different quarters of the city
 It is the time-honored custom of these women once year to choose from their number the one who Is the most beau- tiful to be the queen of their laundry during the fete of Mi-Careme. Then all these queens meet and choose from their number her who is the most beau- tiful of all to be the Queen of Queens, and for one brief day by her youth and beauty she is Queen of Paris. The fes- tivities of Mi Careme begin by the pro- cession at noon, but early in the morn ing the streets begin to fill with people getting places along the line of march. There is nothing to equal the patience of French crowd. People will stand for hours on the edge of sidewalk damned together a solid mass of hu- manity, waiting to see a procession, and nobody loses his temper. All kinds of jokes are permitted during the car nival, and the policemen and cabmen are the chief victims of these pleasan- tries. The small boy has a chance to get even with the "cop," and the tyran- nicaI cabman is forced to take off his hat and bow to right and left under penalty of having his cab promptly up- set by the mob. The sellers of confetti do good business on that day, for ev- erybody from the peasant of the prov inces in white cap and wooden shoes to the dignified old gentleman with silk hat and red ribbon of the Legion of Honor is armed with a bag of confetti, and pelt each other with handfuls of the stuff, which is neither the sugar nor plaster kind used in Italy, but little pieces of paper which resemble nothing so much as those round bits of card board made by railroad conductors S punch. This is sold by the pound in all colors, and men, women and children throw it in each others faces while from the. windows red, blue, green or golden showers of it fall on the people below till a layer of several inches lies on the street. From the windows, too, are thrown strips of colored paper that catch in trees and soon cover them with waving, many colored fringe that glistens in the sunlight the length of the boulevards. The winter rains have now given place to the most gloriouslS warm sunshine, which has brought the leaves out on the trees and spring hats on the heads of the Parisians. The un- usually fine weather added to the high spirits of the crowd on Thursday. I'm HSluS, uOWeVeT, tile SOOu peUpie OL 1SeN Haven closing their shops or leaving their studies and going on to Chapel street, which had been cleared of car riages and electric cars, and peltine each other all day long with confetti But this is just exactly what happens in Paris twice year. The crowd is SC dense that all traffic is suspended from tho Opera to tIe BastiI1e
 About one o'clock the waiting throne are rewarded by the sight of the glis- tening helmets of a detachment of dra- goons that heads the procession. After them, in a gorgeous gilded Louis XIV carriage, rides Prince Carnival and al though a person of great importance or this occasion, he is entirely made ot paste-board and presumably stuffed with straw. Then come the floats rep. resenting the different laundries ot