Here's a lively account of a jolly and slightly drunken masquerade held in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1843. This account has a little of everything: costumes, bad puns, a bit about the dances, and the effects of alcohol on the revelers. It's too long a report to comment on every bit of it, but the entire thing is transcribed at the bottom of this post.
The report starts out with a lot of philosophy about the joys of masquerades, but the first really useful bit is that as in A Few Friends, the unmasking is done at supper-time, which was probably around midnight:
The unmasking at the supper table is often a great source of laughter and surprise, when it discovers the faces of numerous acquaintances who have been playing off their wit and raillery against each other all the evening, under their various disguises.
All sorts of people attended masquerades, which is part of what made them scandalous. In Kentucky, at least, this mixing was not to be feared, though I suspect the upper classes might have differed on this point:
A masquerade is an unsorted class of society, it must be admitted; but are you not liable to mix with bad persons in the best regulated companies? Even robberies have frequently been committed in churches; and if you keep aloof from mankind on that account, you may soon become a crying philosopher, afraid to stir from your own fireside, in order to prevent contamination, and be devoured by hypochondria the remainder of your days.
The writer had a few drinks before arriving and is thus in a good mood:
It was at a late hour that I entered the room, and I was in a right good humor for fun and frolic, and the scene before me, having taken a glass or two of Walker’s rich old wines, the vivifying qualities of which would almost make the dumb to chatter.
Remember "vivifying". The extra "life" provided by alcohol recurs later.
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