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These decorated shrubs were set at the church porch, and seemed to fill the whole of that part of the street with colour and light. When the procession came at last there was one curious thing about it. Such a crowd of people for Janenne took part in it that there was scarcely anybody left to look at it. But then the processionists had the pleasure of looking at each other.

Everybody knew what this proclamation meant. It plainly enough announced that not only would the further demonstrations be prevented, but that the Dublin processionists were to feel "the vengeance of the law" that is the vengeance of the Manchester executioners. Next day the city was beset with the wildest rumours as to the arrests to be made or the prosecutions to be commenced.

The most important physical feature was not, however, the respectable dress, the manly bearing, the order, discipline, and solemnity of the men, but the large bodies of ladies who, in rich and costly attire, marched the whole length of the long route, often ankle deep in mud, utterly regardles of the incessant down-pour of rain which deluged their silks and satins, and melted the mourning crape till it seemed incorporated with the very substance of the velvet mantles or rich shawls in which so many of the fair processionists were enveloped.

There were letters on it, noticed now for the first time minute, hair-like lines beneath the strange-contrasted processionists depicted on the band and even in my excited condition I was a little startled when these letters, forming the end of a sentence, shaped themselves into the words and for the old life there shall be a new life. Turning the bottle round I read the whole sentence.

In my boyhood a great feature in Liverpool was the annual procession of one or other of the local societies. The great Irish and Catholic procession, of which the Hibernians formed the largest contingent, was, of course, on St. Patrick's Day. A considerable portion of the processionists were dock labourers; a fine body of men, who were at this time, as I have already said, mostly Irish.

Every moment some overwhelming accession rolled down Abbey-street or Eden-quay, and swelled the already surging multitude waiting for the start. Long before twelve o'clock, the streets converging on the square were packed with spectators or intending processionists. Cabs struggled hopelessly to yield up the large number of highly respectable and well-attired ladies who had come to walk.

But the demonstration was not confined to the processionists alone; they walked through living walls, for along the entire route a mass of people lined the way, the great majority of whom wore some emblem of mourning, and every window of every house was thronged with ladies and children, nearly all of whom were decorated.

It is a little detail, but a very significant one in this connection, that the committee that organised the various great suffrage processions in London were torn by dispute about the dresses of the processionists. It was urged that a "masculine style of costume" discredited the movement, and women were urged to dress with a maximum of feminine charm.

The processionists took advantage of this diversion of opinion among the Jews to pass on and dispose of their wreaths and votive offerings as it pleased them to do. But on their way back they begged Jesus to perform some more miracles, which he refused to do, and to their great amazement he left them for the Tyrians and Sidonians.

The moon was shining its best; yet, as if the moon and the torches, and the fires in the street, and the rays streaming from windows and open doors were not enough to make the way clear, some of the processionists carried lighted lanterns; and fancying he discovered a special purpose in the use of such equipments, Ben-Hur stepped into the street so close to the line of march as to bring every one of the company under view while passing.