There are many masks in the park tonight, and as the hour wears late, so strange a feeling of revelry and mystery begins to spread abroad, that scarce would you discredit me, reader, were I to say that she is like the nun of the attic, that she wears black skirts and white head-clothes, that she looks the resurrection of the flesh, and that she is a risen ghost.

All falsities⁠—all figments! We will not deal in this gear. Let us be honest, and cut, as heretofore, from the homely web of truth.