Royale). There I partook of a “Creole Gumbo”—a soup compounded of ham, crab, 89shrimps, chicken, and oysters—the bouillabaisse, I take it, of Louisiana.

88

‘Vieux Carré’

Place d’ Armes

89

In the new residential quarters of the city, in St. Charles Avenue and about Audubon Park, there are, no doubt, many beautiful houses, pleasantly embowered in semi-tropical vegetation. One or two of the newest and showiest mansions, in the Spanish style of architecture, I suspected of being built after a fashion I had observed on the outskirts of Memphis—with only a “veneer” of stone. The essential structure is of wood; but an outside casing is added, consisting of rusticated blocks of stone some three or four inches thick, an air-chamber being left between the stone and the wood. Whether this method of building is found successful I cannot say. The effect is often pleasing enough, even though the Lamp of Truth may not shine conspicuous in the architecture.

A run in a river-steamer for several miles up and down the Mississippi enabled me to realize in a measure the commercial magnitude and importance of New Orleans. But what impressed me most of all in the city was its cemeteries, of which it is justly proud. They are certainly magnificent and “pretentious” cities of the dead. (The word “pretentious” is currently used in America as a term of laudation.) Yes; if you want to get buried with everything handsome about you, by all means go to New Orleans. But as a place to live in, I cannot, on short acquaintance, commend it.

90My pleasantest memory of New Orleans is of a house on Prytania Street—cool and airy, on an evening of extreme sultriness—where a lady of Scottish name and descent was good enough to talk to me of her manifold public activities. She is an ardent Suffragist—a rarity in these climes—but, above all things, she devotes herself to the work of holding in check, so far as may be, the terrible evils of child-labour, which its rapidly growing industrialism has brought upon the South.

90

“It is quite true,” said Miss Graham, in answer to a question of mine, “that you may often see the black child going to 

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