*****
"New Orleans is more like the old San Francisco than any other community I have ever seen," says the Californian. Not in any architectural sense and of course two cities could hardly be further apart in location than the city in the flat marshlands whose trees are below the level of the yellow river at flood-tide, and the new city that rises on mountainous slopes from the clear waters of the Golden Gate. But there is an intangible likeness about New Orleans and his city that was but never again can be, that strikes to the soul of the Californian. Perhaps he has come to know something of the real life of the Creoles—of those strange folk who even today can say that they have lived long lives in New Orleans and never gone south of Canal street. Perhaps he has met some of that little company of old French gentlemen who keep their faded black suits in as trim condition as their own good manners, and who scrimp and save through years and months that they may visit—not Chicago or New York—but Paris, Paris the unutterable and the unforgettable.
"New Orleans is more like the old San Francisco than any other community that I have ever seen," reiterates the Californian. "It is more like the old than the new San Francisco can ever become."
And there is a moral in that which the San Franciscan speaks. In the twinkling of an eye the old San Francisco disappeared—forever. Slowly, but surely, the old New Orleans is beginning to fade away. There are indubitable signs of this already. When it shall have gone, our last stronghold of old French customs and manners shall have gone. One of the most fascinating chapters in the story of our Southland will have been closed.
16
THE CITY OF THE LITTLE SQUARES
In after years, you will like to think of it as the City of the Little Squares. After all the other memories of San Antonio are gone—the narrow streets twisting and turning their tortuous ways through the very heart of the old town, the missions strung out along the Concepcion road like faded and broken bits of bric-a-brac, the brave and militant show of arsenal and fort—then shall the fragrance of those open plazas long remain. The Military Plaza, with its great bulk of a City Hall facing it, the Main Plaza, where the grave towers of the little cathedral look down upon the palm-trees and the beggars, the newer, open squares—always plazas in San Antonio—and then, best of all, the Alamo Plaza, with that squat namesake structure facing it—the lion of a town of many lions. These open places are the distinctive features of the oldest and the best of the Texas towns. They lend to it the Latin air that renders it different from most other cities in America. They help to make San Antonio seem far more like Europe than America.
One of the little squares—and the big cathedral—San Antonio