CHAPTER VI
CELEBRATION OF THE CALENDAR
IN a description of manners and customs such as this, the writer's main difficulty after the material is at hand is that of selection and arrangement. An absolutely complete survey of the field, even if such a survey were possible, would in no way fulfil the purposes of the present volume, which, the author hopes, sufficiently describes the times without, on the other hand, presuming either to the tediousness or volubility which is the peculiar birthright of the technological dictionary. In treating, then, of the Elizabethan celebration of the calendar, a few of the most important feast days and their customs have been described in detail as typical; the remainder is left to the dictionary or to the imagination, according as one or the other is at hand.
Yet a word may be said to advantage concerning the omitted portion of the calendar. It is well for Americans to bear in mind that in this country to-day the days of the calendar are not nearly so familiar to the people at large as they
