THE GOODNESS OF ST. ROCQUE AND OTHER STORIES 

 

 By 

 ALICE DUNBAR 

 

 To My best Comrade My Husband 

 

 CONTENTS 

 THE GOODNESS OF SAINT ROCQUE TONY'S WIFE THE FISHERMAN OF PASS CHRISTIAN M'SIEU FORTIER'S VIOLIN BY THE BAYOU ST. JOHN WHEN THE BAYOU OVERFLOWS MR. BAPTISTE A CARNIVAL JANGLE LITTLE MISS SOPHIE SISTER JOSEPHA THE PRALINE WOMAN ODALIE LA JUANITA TITEE 

 

 

 THE GOODNESS OF SAINT ROCQUE 

 Manuela was tall and slender and graceful, and once you knew her the lithe form could never be mistaken. She walked with the easy spring that comes from a perfectly arched foot. To-day she swept swiftly down Marais Street, casting a quick glance here and there from under her heavy veil as if she feared she was being followed. If you had peered under the veil, you would have seen that Manuela's dark eyes were swollen and discoloured about the lids, as though they had known a sleepless, tearful night. There had been a picnic the day before, and as merry a crowd of giddy, chattering Creole girls and boys as ever you could see boarded the ramshackle dummy-train that puffed its way wheezily out wide Elysian Fields Street, around the lily-covered bayous, to Milneburg-on-the-Lake. Now, a picnic at Milneburg is a thing to be remembered for ever. One charters a rickety-looking, weather-beaten dancing-pavilion, built over the water, and after storing the children—for your true Creole never leaves the small folks at home—and the baskets and mothers downstairs, the young folks go up-stairs and dance to the tune of the best band you ever heard. For what can equal the music of a violin, a guitar, a cornet, and a bass viol to trip the quadrille to at a 

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