The Festivities and Pageants arranged for his Majesty’s reception will surpass in joyousness and splendor the most brilliant attainments of his glorious past. It is ordained that good weather shall prevail, and the City of Flowers in its Festive array promises abundant pleasure to all within her gates.

—Proclamation by the King of the Carnival, 1934

From Henri Schindler’s Mardi Gras: New Orleans. Illustration by S. von Ehrens.

To everyone in New Orleans—and wherever Carnival is celebrated—we send warm greetings and best wishes for abundant fun and pleasures on Fat Tuesday, for joyful forgetting and release from heavy cares, and hopes that you may come back to your daily life refreshed and reinvigorated, with not too grinding a hangover.

For the people of Louisiana who are jobless and need unemployment insurance relief, we hope your ambitious governor will come (or be brought) to his senses and accept the financial assistance that Washington has made available for the public good.

Laissez les bon temps rouler!