I fear some were intoxicated and, sadly, not only the boys. Oh, colorful they were, that squirming mass of apprentices and laboring lads, of chambermaids off for the night and huckster girls freed of flower carts and fruit trays. Got up bright in cast-off clothes, a benefit of certain domestic employments, the best-appointed females paraded the fashions of seasons past. Some of the boys affected velvet coats, despite the summer’s heat, while others, mannered worst of all, had stripped off their jackets and turned back their sleeves in public, with all the license of secluded artisans. But the herding together it was that struck me deepest, a mixing of the sexes indiscriminate, with bodies pushed up tight to one another, close as soldiers on a freezing night. Those young girls, some of them fair in the common way, did not display the least regard for modesty. There were fights, of course. For some male hands explored beyond all permissible boundaries in that tangle. But, mostly, there was laughter and good feeling of a depth that proper folk would hardly credit.
