American Adventures Part 54

But if we excused her, she did not excuse herself. Without being shaken awake by an earthquake, or forced to action by a devastating fire or flood, she set to work, calmly and of her own volition, to reform her character.

First she cleaned house, providing good surface drainage, an excellent filtered water supply from the river in place of her old mosquito-breeding cisterns, and modern sewers in place of cesspools. She killed rats by the hundreds of thousands, rat-proofed her buildings, and thus, at one stroke, eliminated all fear of bubonic plague. She began to take interest in the public schools, and soon trebled their advantages.

She concerned herself with the revision of repressive tax laws. She secured one of the best street railway systems in the country. But, perhaps most striking of all, she set to work to build scientifically toward the realization of a gigantic dream. This dream embodies the resumption by New Orleans of her old place as second seaport city. To this end she is doing more than any other city to revive the commerce of the Mississippi River, and is at the same time making a strong bid for trade by way of the Panama Ca.n.a.l, as well as other sea traffic. She has restored her forty miles of water front to the people, has built munic.i.p.al docks and warehouses at a cost of millions, and has so perfectly coordinated her river-rail-sea traffic-handling agencies that rates have been greatly reduced. Upon these, and related enterprises, upward of a hundred millions are being spent, and the vast plan is working out with such promise that one almost begins to fear lest New Orleans become too much enamored of her new-found materialism--lest the easy-going, pleasure-loving, fascinating Creole belle be transformed into the much-less-rare and much-less-desirable business type of woman: a woman whose letters, instead of being written in a fine French hand and scented with the faint fragrance of vertivert, are typewritten upon commercial paper; whose lips, instead of causing one to think of kisses, are laden with the deadly cant of commerce; whose skin, instead of seeming to be made of milk and rose leaves, is dappled with industrial soot.

Lord Chesterfield in one of his letters to his son, intimated that beautiful women desire to be flattered upon their intelligence, while intelligent women who are not altogether ugly like to be told that they are beautiful. So with New Orleans. Speak of her individuality, her picturesqueness, her gift of laughter, and she will listen with polite ennui; but admire her commercial progress and she will hang upon your words. Gaiety and charm are so much a part of her that she not only takes them as a matter of course, but seems to doubt, sometimes, that they are virtues. She is like some unusual and fascinating woman who, instead of rejoicing because she is not like all other women, begins to wonder if she ought not to be like them. Perhaps she is wrong to be gay?

Perhaps her carnival proves her frivolous? Perhaps she ought not to continue to hold a carnival each year?

Far to the north of New Orleans the city of St. Paul was afflicted, some years since, by a similar agitation. It will be remembered that St.

Paul used to build an ice palace each year. People used to go to see it as they go to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. Then came some believer in the standardization of cities, advancing the idea that ice palaces advertised St. Paul as a cold place. As a result they ceased to be built. St. Paul threw away something which drew attention to her and which gave her character. Moreover, I am told this mania went so far that when folders were issued for the purpose of advertising the region, they were designed to suggest the warmth and brilliance of the tropics.

Had St. Paul a bad climate, instead of a peculiarly fine one, we might feel sympathetic tolerance for these performances, but a city which enjoys cool summers and dry, bracing winters has no apologies to make upon the score of climate, and only need apologize if she tries to make us think that bananas and cocoanuts grow on sugar-maple trees. However, in the last year or two, St. Paul has perceived the folly of her course, and has resumed her annual carnival.

In the case of New Orleans I cannot believe there is real danger that the carnival will be given up. Instead, I believe that the business enthusiasts will be appeased--as they were a year or two ago, for the first time in carnival history--by the inclusion of an industrial pageant glorifying the city's commercial renaissance. Also the New Orleans newspapers soothe the spirit of the a.s.sociation of Commerce, at carnival time, by publis.h.i.+ng items presumably furnished by that capable organization, showing that business is going on as usual, that bank clearings have not diminished during the festivities, and that, despite the air of happiness that pervades the town, New Orleans is not really beginning to have such a good time as a stranger might suppose from superficial signs. With such concessions made to solemn visaged commerce, is the carnival continued.

There are at least six cities on this continent which every one should see. Every one should see New York because it is the largest city in the world, and because it combines the magnificence, the wonder, the beauty, the sordidness, and the shame of a great metropolis; every one should see San Francis...o...b..cause it is so vivid, so alive, so golden; every one should see Was.h.i.+ngton, the clean, white splendor of which is like the embodiment of a national dream; every one should see the old gray granite city of Quebec, piled on its hill above the river like some fortified town in France; every one should see the sweet and aristocratic city of Charleston, which suggests a museum of tradition and early American elegance; and of course every one should see New Orleans.

As to whether it is best to see the city in everyday attire, or masked for the revels, that is a matter of taste, and perhaps of age as well.

To any one who loves cities, New Orleans is always good to see, while to the lover of spectacles and fetes the carnival is also worth seeing--once. The two are, however, hardly to be seen to advantage simultaneously. To visit New Orleans in carnival time is like visiting some fine old historic mansion when it is all in a flurry over a fancy-dress ball. The furniture is moved, master, mistress and servants are excited, the cook is overworked and is perhaps complaining a little, and the brilliant costumes of the masquerade divert the eye of the visitor so that he hardly knows what sort of house he is in. Attend the ball if you like, but do not fail to revisit the house when normal conditions have been restored; see the festivities of Mardi Gras if you will, but do not fail to browse about old New Orleans and sit down at her famous tables when her chefs have time to do their best.

CHAPTER LVII

HISTORY, THE CREOLE, AND HIS DUELS

Ca.n.a.l Street is to New Orleans much more than Main Street is to Buffalo, much more than Broad Street is to Philadelphia, much more than Broadway and Fifth Avenue are to New York, for Ca.n.a.l Street divides New Orleans as no other street divides an American city. It divides New Orleans as the Seine divides Paris, and there is not more difference between the right bank of the Seine and the Latin Quarter than between American New Orleans and Creole New Orleans: between the newer part of the city and the _vieux carre_. The sixty squares ("islets" according to the Creole idiom, because each block was literally an islet in time of flood) which comprise the old French town established in 1718 by the Sieur de Bienville, are unlike the rest of the city not merely in architecture, but in all respects. The street names change at Ca.n.a.l Street, the highways become narrower as you enter the French quarter, and the pavements are made of huge stone blocks brought over long ago as ballast in sailing s.h.i.+ps. Nor is the difference purely physical. For though they will tell you that this part of the city is not so French and Spanish as it used to be, that it has run down, that large parts of it have been given over to Italians of the lower cla.s.s, and to negroes, it remains not only in appearance, but in custom, thought and character, the most perfectly foreign little tract of land in the whole United States. Long ago, under the French flag, it was a part of the Roman Catholic bishopric of Quebec; later under the Spanish flag, a part of that of Havana; and it is charming to trace in old buildings, names, and customs the signs of this blended French and Spanish ancestry.

La Salle, searching out a supposed route to China by way of the Mississippi River, seems to have perceived what the New Orleans a.s.sociation of Commerce perceives to-day: that the control of the mouth of the river ought to mean also the control of a vast part of the continent. At all events, he took possession in 1682 in the name of the French King, calling the river St. Louis and the country Louisiana. The latter name persisted, but La Salle himself later rechristened the river, giving it the name Colbert, thereby showing that in two attempts he could not find a name one tenth as good as that already provided by the savages. The "St. Louis River" might, from its name, be a fair-sized stream, but "Colbert" sounds like the name of a river about twenty miles long, forty feet wide at the mouth, and five feet deep at the very middle.

La Salle intended to build a fort at a point sixty leagues above the mouth of the river, but his expedition met with disaster upon disaster, until at last he was a.s.sa.s.sinated in Texas, when setting out on foot to seek help from Canada. In 1699 came Iberville, the Canadian, exploring the river and fixing on the site for the future city. Iberville established settlements at old Biloxi (now Ocean Springs) and Mobile, but before he had time to make a town at New Orleans he caught yellow fever at Havana, and died there. It therefore remained for his brother, Bienville, actually to establish the town, and New Orleans is Bienville's city, just as Detroit is Cadillac's, and Cleveland General Moses Cleveland's.

Bienville's settlers were hardy pioneers from Canada, and presently we find him writing to France: "Send me wives for my Canadians. They are running in the woods after Indian girls." The priests also urged that unless white wives could be sent out for the settlers, marriages with Indians be sanctioned.

Having now a considerable investment in Louisiana, France felt that a request for wives for the colony was practical and legitimate. Louisiana must have population. A bonus of so much per head was offered for colonists, and hideous things ensued: servants, children, and helpless women were kidnapped, and the occupants of hospitals, asylums, and houses of correction were a.s.sembled and deported. Incidentally it will be remembered that out of these black deeds flowered "the first masterpiece of French literature which can properly be called a novel,"

the Abbe Prevost's "Manon Lescaut," which has been dramatized and redramatized, and which is the theme of operas by both Ma.s.senet and Puccini. Though a grave alleged to be that of Manon used to be shown on the outskirts of the city, there is doubt that such a person actually existed, although those who wish to believe in a flesh-and-blood Manon may perhaps take encouragement from the fact that the arrival in the colony of a Chevalier des Grieux, in the year 1719, fourteen years before the book appeared, has been established, and, further, that the name of the Chevalier des Grieux may be seen upon a crumbling tomb in one of the river parishes.

When the girls arrived they were on inspection in the daytime, but at night were carefully guarded by soldiers, in the house where they were quartered together. Miss Grace King, in her delightful book, "New Orleans, the Place and the People," tells us that in these times there were never enough girls to fill the demand for wives, and that in one instance two young bachelors proposed to fight over a very plain girl--the last one left out of a s.h.i.+pload--but that the commandant obliged them to settle their dispute by the more pacific means of drawing lots. As the place became settled Ursuline sisters arrived and established schools. And at last, a quarter of a century after the landing of the first s.h.i.+pment of girls, the curious history of female importations ended with the arrival of that famous band of sixty demoiselles of respectable family and "authenticated spotless reputation," who came to be taken as wives by only the more prosperous young colonists of the better cla.s.s. The earlier, less reputable girls have come down to us by the name of "correction girls," but these later arrivals--each furnished by the Company of the West with a casket containing a trousseau--are known to this day as _les filles a la ca.s.sette_, or "casket girls."

A curious feature of this bit of history, as it applies to present-day New Orleans, is that though one hears of many families that claim descent from some nice, well-behaved "casket girl," one never by any chance hears of a family claiming to be descended from a lady of the other stock. When it is considered that the "correction girls" far outnumbered their virtuous sisters of the casket, and ought, therefore, by the law of averages, to have left a greater progeny, the matter becomes stranger still, taking on a scientific interest. The explanation must, however, be left to some mind more astute than mine--some mind capable, perhaps, of unraveling also those other riddles of New Orleans namely: Who was the mysterious chevalier who many years ago invented that most delectable of _sucreries_, the praline, and whither did he vanish? And how, although the refugee Duc d'Orleans (later Louis Philippe of France) stayed but a short time in New Orleans, did he manage to sleep in so many hundred beds, and in houses which were not built until long after his departure? And why are so many of the signs, over bars, restaurants, and shops, of that blue and white enamel one a.s.sociates with the signs of the Western Union Telegraph Company? And why is the nickel as characteristic of New Orleans as is the silver dollar of the farther Middle West, and gold coin of the Pacific Slope--why, when one pays for a ten-cent purchase with a half-dollar, does one receive eight nickels in change? Ah, but New Orleans is a mysterious city!

Once, when the French and English were fighting for the possession of Canada and New Orleans was depending for protection on Swiss mercenaries, the French officer in command of these troops disciplined them by stripping them and tying them to trees, where they were a prey to the terrible mosquitoes of the Gulf. One day they killed him and fled, but some of them were captured. These were taken back to New Orleans, court-martialed, and punished according to the regulations: they were nailed alive to their coffins and sawed in two.

Ceded to Spain by a secret clause in the Treaty of Paris, of which she did not know until 1764, Louisiana could not believe the news. Even when the Acadians, appeared, after having been so cruelly ejected from their lands in what is now New Brunswick, Louisiana could not believe that Louis XV would coldly cast off his loyal colony. The fact that he had done so was not credited until a Spanish governor arrived. For three years after, there was confusion. Then a strong force was sent from Spain under Count O'Reilly, a man of Irish birth, but Spanish allegiance, and the flag of Spain was raised. O'Reilly maintained viceregal splendor; he invited leading citizens to a levee; here in his own house he caused his soldiers to seize the group of prominent men who had attempted to prevent the accomplishment of Spanish rule, and five of these he presently caused to be shot as rebels.

Spanish governors came and went. The people settled down. At one time Padre Antonio de Sedella, a Spanish Capuchin, arrived with a commission to establish in the city the Holy office of the Inquisition, but he was discouraged and s.h.i.+pped back to Cadiz. Miss King tells us that when, half a century later, the calaboose was demolished, secret dungeons containing instruments of torture were discovered.

On Good Friday, 1788, fire broke out, and as the priests refused to let the bells be rung in warning, saying that all bells must be dumb on Good Friday, the conflagration gained such headway that it could not be checked, and a large part of the old French town was reduced to ashes.

Six years later another fire equally destructive, completed the work of blotting out the French town, and the old New Orleans we now know is the Spanish city which arose in its place: a city not of wood but of adobe or brick, stuccoed and tinted, of arcaded walks, galleries, jalousies, ponderous doors, and inner courts with carriage entrances from the street, and, behind, the most charming and secluded gardens. Also, owing to premiums offered by Baron Carondelet, the governor, tile roofs came into vogue, so that the city became comparatively fireproof. Much of the present-day charm of the old city is due also to the n.o.ble Andalusian, Don Andreas Almonaster y Roxas, who having immigrated and made a great fortune in the city, became its benefactor, building schools and other public inst.i.tutions, the picturesque old Cabildo, or town hall, which is now a most fascinating museum, the cathedral, which adjoins the Cabildo, and which, like it, faces Jackson Square, formerly the Place d'Armes. In front of the altar of his cathedral Don Andreas is buried, and ma.s.ses are said, in perpetuity, for his soul. When the Don's young widow remarried, she and her husband were pursued by a charivari lasting three days and three nights--the most famous charivari in the history of a city widely noted for these detestable functions. The Don's daughter, a great heiress, became the Baronne Pontalba and resided in magnificence in Paris, where she died, a very old woman, in 1874.

In the Place d'Armes much of the early history of New Orleans, and indeed, of Louisiana, was written. Here, and in the Cabildo, the transfers from flag to flag took place, ending with the ceding of Louisiana by Spain to France, and by France to the United States. At this time New Orleans had about ten thousand inhabitants, most of the whites being Creoles.

Harris d.i.c.kson, who knows a great deal about New Orleans, declared in an article published some years ago, that outside lower Louisiana the word "Creole" is still misunderstood, and added this definition of the term: "A person of mixed French and Spanish blood, born in Louisiana." As I understand it, however, the blood need not necessarily be mixed, but may be pure Spanish or pure French, or again, there may be some admixture of English blood. The word itself was, I am informed, originally Spanish, and signified an American descended from Spaniards; later it got into the language of the French West Indies, whence it was imported, to Louisiana, about the end of the eighteenth century, by refugees who arrived in considerable numbers from San Domingo, after the revolution of the blacks there. Thus, the early French settlers did not use the word.

If any misapprehension as to whether a Creole is a white person does still exist, that misunderstanding is, I believe, to be traced to the doors of an old-time cheap burlesque theater in Chicago, where the late impresario, Sam T. Jack, put on a show in which mulatto women were billed as "a galaxy of Creole beauties." This show traveled about the country libeling the Creoles and doubtless causing many persons of that cla.s.s which attended Sam T. Jack's shows, to believe that "Creole" means something like "quadroon." But when the show got to Baton Rouge the manager was waited upon by a committee of citizens who said certain things to him which caused him to give up his engagement there and cancel any other engagements he had in the Creole country.

True, one frequently hears references in New Orleans to "Creole mammies," and "Creole negroes," but the word used in that sense merely indicates a negro who has been the servant of Creoles, and who speaks French--"gombo French" the curious dialect is called. Similarly one hears of "Creole ponies"--these being ponies of the small, strong type used by the Cajan farmers. According to the Louisiana dialect Longfellow's "Evangeline" was a Cajan, the word being a corruption of "Acadian." About a thousand of these unfortunate expatriates arrived in New Orleans between 1765 and 1768. Within a century they had multiplied to forty times that number, spreading over the entire western part of the State.

Much of the temperament, the gaiety, the sensitiveness of New Orleans comes from the Creole. He was Latin enough to be a good deal of a gambler, to love beautiful women, and on slight provocation to draw his sword.

The street names of New Orleans--not only those of the French Quarter, but of the whole city--reflect his various tastes. Many of the streets bear the names of historic figures of the French and Spanish regimes; Rampart Street, formerly the rue des Ramparts marks, like the outer boulevards of Paris, the line of the old city wall. Other streets were given pretty feminine names by the old Creole gallants: Suzette, Celeste, Estelle, Angelie, and the like. The devout doubtless had their share in the naming of Religious Street, Nuns Street, Piety Street, a.s.sumption Street, and Amen Street. The taste for Greek and Roman cla.s.sicism which developed in France at the time of the Revolution, found its way to Louisiana, and is reflected in New Orleans by streets bearing the names of G.o.ds, demi G.o.ds, the muses and the graces. The p.r.o.nunciation given to some of these names is curious: Melpomene, instead of being given four syllables is called Melpomeen; Calliope is similarly Callioap; Euterpe, Euterp, and so on. This, however, is the result not of ignorance, but of a slight corruption of the correct French p.r.o.nunciations, the Americans having taken their way of p.r.o.nouncing the names from the French. The Napoleonic wars are commemorated in the names of Napoleon Avenue, and Austerlitz and Jena Streets, and the visit of Lafayette in the naming for him of both a street and an avenue. But perhaps the most striking names of all the old ones were Mystery Street, Madman's Street, Love Street (Rue de l'Amour), Goodchildren Street (Rue des Bons Enfants), and above all those two streets in the Faubourg Marigny which old Bernard Marigny amused himself by naming for two games of chance at which, it is said, he had lost a fortune--namely Bagatelle and c.r.a.ps--the latter not the game played with dice, but an old-time game of cards.

The French spoken by cultivated Creoles bears to the French of modern France about the same relation as the current English of Virginia does to that of England. Creole French is founded largely upon the French of the seventeenth and early eighteenth century, just as many of the so-called "Americanisms" of older parts of the country, including Virginia and New England, are Elizabethan. The early English and French colonists, coming to this country with the language of their times, dropped, over here, into a linguistic backwater. In the mother countries language continued to renew itself as it flowed along, by elisions, by the adoption and legitimatizing of slang words (as for instance the word "cab," to which Dean Swift objected on the ground that it was slang for "cabriolet"), and by all the other means through which our vocabularies are forever changing. But to the colonies these changes were not carried, and such changes as occurred in the French and English of America were, for the most part, separate and distinct (as exampled by such Creole words as "banquette" for "sidewalk," in place of the French word _trottoir_, and the word "baire," whence comes the American term "mosquito bar.") The influence of colloquial French from Canada may also be traced in New Orleans, and the language there was further affected by the strange jargon spoken by the Creole negro--precisely as the English dialect of negroes in other parts of the South may be said to have affected the speech of all the Southern States.

Between the dialect of the Louisiana Cajan and that of the French Canadian of Quebec and northern New York there is a strong resemblance; but the Creole negro language is a thing entirely apart, being made up, it is said, partly from French and partly from African word sounds, just as the "gulla" of the South Carolina coast is made up from African and English. The one is no more intelligible to a Frenchman than the other to a Londoner. The ignorant Creole negro wis.h.i.+ng to say "I do not understand," would not say "moi je ne comprends pas," but "mo pas connais"; similarly for "I am going away," he does not say, "je m'en vais," but "ma pe couri"; while for "I have a horse," instead of "j'ai un cheval," he will put the statement, "me ganye choue." It is a dialect lacking mood, tense, and grammar.

To this day one may occasionally see in New Orleans and in other lower river towns an old "mammy" wearing the bandanna headdress called a _tignon_, which, toward the end of the eighteenth century, was made compulsory for colored women in Louisiana. The need for some such distinguis.h.i.+ng racial badge was, it is said, twofold. Yellow sirens from the French West Indies, flocking to New Orleans, were becoming exceedingly conspicuous in dress and adornment; furthermore one hears stories of wealthy white men, fathers of octoroon or quadroon girls, who sent these illegitimate daughters abroad to be educated. The latter, one learns from many sources, were very often beautiful in the extreme, as were also the Domingan girls, and history is full of the tales of the curious, wild, fas.h.i.+onably caparisoned, decla.s.se circle of society, which came to exist in New Orleans through the presence there of so many alluring women of light color and equally light character. Some of these women, it is said, could hardly be distinguished from brunette whites, and it was largely for this reason that the _tignon_ was placed by law upon the heads of all women having negro blood.

No morsels from the history of old New Orleans are more suggestive to the imagination than the hints we get from many sources of wildly dissipated life centering around the notorious quadroon b.a.l.l.s--or as they were called in their day, _cordon bleu_ b.a.l.l.s. An old guide book informs me that the women who were the great attraction at these functions were "probably the handsomest race of women in the world, and were, besides, splendid dancers and finished dressers." Authorities seem to agree that these b.a.l.l.s were exceedingly popular among the young Creole gentlemen, as well as with men visiting the city, and that duels, resulting from quarrels over the women, were of common occurrence. If a Creole had the choice of weapons slender swords called _colichemardes_ were used, whereas pistols were almost invariably selected by Americans.

Duels with swords were often fought indoors, but when firearms were to be employed the combatants repaired to one of the customary dueling grounds. Under the fine old live oaks of the City Park--then out in the country--it is said that as many as ten duels have been fought in a single day. Duels having their beginnings at the quadroon b.a.l.l.s were, however, often fought in St. Anthony's Garden, for the ballroom was in a building (now occupied by a sisterhood of colored nuns) which stands on Orleans Street, near where it abuts against the Garden. This garden, bearing the name of the saint whose temptations have been of such conspicuous interest to painters of the nude, is not named for him so much in his own right, as because he was the patron of that same Padre Antonio de Sedella, already mentioned, who came to New Orleans to inst.i.tute the Inquisition, but who, after having been sent away by Governor Miro, returned as a secular priest and became much beloved for his good works. Padre Antonio lived in a hut near the garden, and it is he who figures in Thomas Bailey Aldrich's story "Pere Antoine's Date Palm."

To the Creole, more than to any other source, may be traced the origin of dueling in the United States, and no city in the country has such a dueling history as New Orleans. The American took the practice from the Latin and by the adoption of pistols made the duel a much more serious thing than it had previously been, when swords were employed and first blood usually const.i.tuted "satisfaction." Up to the time of the Civil War the man who refused a challenge became a sort of outcast, and I have been told that even to this day a duel is occasionally fought. Governor Claiborne, first American governor of Louisiana, was a duelist, and his monument--a family monument in the annex of the old Basin Street division of St. Louis cemetery--bears upon one side an inscription in memory of his brother-in-law, Micajah Lewis, "who fell in a duel, January 14, 1804."

Gayarre, in his history of Louisiana, tells a story of six young French n.o.blemen who, one night, paired off and fought for no reason whatever save out of bravado. Two of them were killed.

Two famous characters of New Orleans, about the middle of the last century, were Major Joe Howell, a brother-in-law of Jefferson Davis, and Major Henry, a dare-devil soldier of fortune who had filibustered in Nicaragua and fought in the Mexican War. One day while drinking together they quarreled, and as a result a duel was arranged to take place the same afternoon. Henry kept on drinking, but Howell went to sleep and slept until it was time to go to the dueling ground, when he took one c.o.c.ktail, and departed.

Feeling that a duel over a disagreement the occasion for which neither contestant could remember, was the height of folly, friends intervened, and finally succeeded in getting Major Henry to say that the fight could be called off if Howell would apologize.

"For what?" he was asked.

"Don't know and don't care," returned the old warrior.

As Howell would not apologize, navy revolvers were produced and the two faced each other, the understanding being that they should begin at ten paces with six barrels loaded, firing at will and advancing. At the word "Fire!" both shot and missed, but Howell c.o.c.ked his revolver with his right thumb and fired again immediately, wounding Henry in the arm.

Henry then fired and missed a second time, while Howell's third shot struck his antagonist in the abdomen. Wounded as he was, Henry managed to fire again, narrowly missing the other, who was not only a giant in size, but was a conspicuous mark, owing to the white clothing which he wore. At this Howell advanced a step and took steady aim, and he would almost certainly have killed his opponent had not his own second reached out and thrown his pistol up, sending the shot wild. This occurred after the other side has cried "Stop!"--as it had been agreed should be done in case either man was badly wounded. A foul was consequently claimed, the seconds drew their pistols, and a general battle was narrowly averted. After many weeks Henry recovered.

A great number of historic duels were over politics. Such a one was the fight which took place in 1843, between Mr. Hueston, editor of the Baton Rouge "Gazette" and Mr. Alcee La Branche, a Creole gentleman who had been speaker of the Louisiana House of Representatives, and was running for Congress. Mr. La Branche was one of the few public men in the State who had never fought a duel, and in the course of a violent political campaign, Hueston twitted him on this subject in the columns of the "Gazette," trying to make him out a coward. Soon after the insulting article appeared, the two men met in the billiard room of the old St.

Charles Hotel, and when La Branche demanded an apology, and was refused, he struck Hueston with a cane, or a cue, and knocked him down. A duel was, of course, arranged, the weapons selected being double-barreled shotguns loaded with ball. At the first discharge Hueston's hat and coat were punctured by bullets. He demanded a second exchange of shots, which resulted about as before--his own shots going wild, while those of his opponent narrowly missed him. Hueston, however, obstinately insisted that the duel be continued, and the guns were loaded for the third time. In the next discharge the editor received a scalp wound. It was now agreed by all present that matters had gone far enough, but Hueston remained obdurate in his intention to kill or be killed, and in the face of violent protests, demanded that the guns again be loaded. The next exchange of shots proved to be the last. Hueston let both barrels go without effect, and fell to the ground shot through the lungs. Taken to the Maison de Sante, he was in such agony that he begged a friend to finish the work by shooting him through the head. Within a few hours he was dead.

The old guide book from which I gather these items cites, also, cases in which duels were fought over trivial matters, such, for instance, as a mildly hostile newspaper criticism of an operatic performance, and an argument between a Creole and a Frenchman over the greatness of the Mississippi River.

Professor Brander Matthews tells me of an episode in which the wit exhibited by a Creole lawyer, in the course of a case in a New Orleans court, caused him to be challenged. The opposing counsel, likewise a Creole, was a great dandy. He appeared in an immaculate white suit and boiled s.h.i.+rt, but the weather was warm, and after he had spoken for perhaps half an hour his s.h.i.+rt was wilted, and he asked an adjournment.

The adjournment over, he reappeared in a fresh s.h.i.+rt, but this too wilted presently, whereupon another adjournment was taken. At the end of this he again reappeared wearing a third fresh s.h.i.+rt, and in it managed to complete his plea.

It now became the other lawyer's turn. He arose and, speaking with the utmost gravity, addressed the jury.

"Gentlemen," he said (Professor Matthews tells it in French), "I shall divide my speech into three s.h.i.+rts." He then announced: "First s.h.i.+rt"--and made his first point. This accomplished, he paused briefly, then proclaimed: "Second s.h.i.+rt," and followed with his second point.