Lower Camp Street was occupied mostly by exchange brokers’ and such offices. The Sun Mutual Insurance Company had a conspicuous sign on a modest two-story brick building which any insurance structure to-day would put to shame.
If it is near Christmas time, when we are taking this gossipy ramble, we might meet a flock of turkeys marching up Camp Street, guided by a man and boys with long poles. In those days fowls were not offered for sale ready dressed or plucked, but sold “on the hoof,” as we say of cattle. Camp and the adjacent resident streets were, to use another Westernism, a favorite “turkey trot.” Those turkeys may have trotted miles. Goodness knows whence they took up the line of march—presumably at some boat landing—but they were docile as lambs and in good condition. No roast turkey gobbler, or, better still, boiled turkey hen with oyster dressing, tastes now like the ones mother had on her table when I was a child and clamored for the drum-stick. What does taste as good to us old folks to-day? Nothing! Absolutely nothing!...
In Exchange Alley (it may have a new name now, since Triton Walk and Customhouse Street and others of the old days have been rechristened) my father and a number of other “attorneys at law,” as their signs indicated, had offices. Mr. Wharton was one, and I also recall two Hebrew beaux of that date who were neighbors of my father’s, A. K. Josephs and M. M. Cohen. Nobody knew their given names. Beyond Camp Street, near Magazine, Mme. Shall kept a boarding house. It was a popular hostelry for gentlemen. Ladies did not board, except (to use Susan Nippers’ language) as temporaries.
Exchange Alley.
Visitors to the city “put up” at the St. Charles Hotel, in the hands of Colonel Mudge. St. Charles was the best hotel even then, comparing favorably with the Galt House, in Louisville, under the management of that prince of hosts, Major Aris Throckmorton—which is saying volumes for the St. Charles. In the season flocks of Nashville, Louisville and Cincinnati belles descended upon New Orleans, sat in gorgeous attire and much chatter of voices on the divans under the chandelier of the St. Charles parlor, while the kindly fathers and insinuating brothers, bent on giving the girls a good time, foraged about the ample rotunda, captured, escorted in and introduced many eligible beaux found sauntering around that fascinating rendezvous.
Up Carondelet Street—one could not find the location on a city map now, for, as I remember, the streets were not named—were suburban homes, all about, quite remote and countrified. Judge John N. Duncan lived in one of those cottages. There was a grand, big yard surrounding it, with fig trees, hedges, rosebushes and vines, a perfect bower of delight to us children. Rose, the only daughter, was a lifelong friend of mine. She became the first wife of Col. William Preston Johnston. Nearby lived the Peter Conreys, who gave lovely lawn parties, that the naughty uninvited dubbed “Feat sham peters.”
Not so very far away, in the neighborhood of Constance and Robin Streets, there was erected in 1843 Quite a grand residence for the Slark family. I do not remember much of them in those early days, though they lived near enough to my father’s to be neighbors. Later in life my acquaintance with them was more intimate. I recall, though, quite vividly Mrs. Slark’s visiting card, which I admired prodigiously. Being a small collector of curios that unique bit of pasteboard was one of my treasures till I lost it! There seems to have been considerable latitude in the style of visiting cards about that time—some were highly glazed and had gilt edges; some were even pink tinged, but I think Mrs. Slark’s was the ne plus ultra—a bird’s beak holding a waving pennant, and on its flowing folds was engraved “Mrs.—Abigail—L.—Slark,” something after the style of the eagle and E pluribus unum.