One of the features of our holiday doings was the procession which spontaneously came into order, after dinner, when there was anything to the fore in the pine-woods. Then a parade took place like unto the wedding march of the villagers in an old fashioned opera. There was always some display of decoration on such occasions, usually floral, the girls, wearing garlands and wreaths or sprays of vine and chaplets of leaves. Headed, perhaps by the boys with fife and drum, or by the members of the cast if a play was to be given, the whole community, young men and maidens, old men and children, went singing from one end of the place to the other, that is from the Hive near the entrance to the Amphitheater near the far side of the grove.
When a high festival was to be celebrated, the procession took on the picturesque dignity of a pageant. A real pageant we dearly loved, but the show was too expensive to be offered more than once or twice annually. We had to hire musicians as our own were too busy to serve. Then the costumes and banners and hangings took a good bit of money, though artistic ingenuity helped out amazingly. Where all the magnificence came from was a mystery, the splendors of purple and gold, of rich draperies, fine furbelows, shining garments and glittering adornments being really splendid. Bonico and I, as Heralds, for example, once were superbly arrayed in white tabards emblazoned with red dragons and gold embroidery, cut from paper and pasted on white muslin. There was a deal of real, genuine, sumptuous finery brought out from family wardrobes for the pageant, but the hint as to the Heralds indicated how an effect could be produced at small cost.
The finest pageant we ever had was arranged by the Festal Series, after the reorganization. It was historic in design, illustrating the Elizabethan period in England. Dr. Ripley personated Shakespeare; Miss Ripley, Queen Elizabeth, in a tissue paper ruff, which I helped to make; Mr. Dana, Sir Walter Raleigh; Mary Bullard, the most beautiful of our young women, Mary Queen of Scots, and Charles Hosmer, Sir Philip Sidney. The programme sent home to mother, at the time, gives a list of the characters represented but it need not be further quoted here.