Ha Tinguoaiée
Ha Tinguoaiée.”
I have undertaken a project which I hardly hope to succeed in, but which I feel some zeal regarding, viz., to collect the Creole legends, traditions, and songs of Louisiana. Unfortunately I shall never be able to do this thoroughly without money,—plenty of money,—but I can do a good deal, perhaps.
I must also tell you that I find Spanish remarkably easy to acquire; and believe that at the end of another year I shall be able to master it,—write it and speak it well. To do the latter, however, I shall be obliged to spend some time in some part of the Spanish-American colonies,—whither my thoughts have been turned for some time. With a good knowledge of three languages, I can prosecute my wanderings over the face of the earth without timidity,—without fear of starving to death after each migration.
After all, it has been lucky for me that I was obliged to quit hard newspaper work; for it has afforded me opportunities for self-improvement which I could not otherwise have acquired. I should like, indeed, to make more money; but one must sacrifice something in order to study, and I must not grumble, as long as I can live while learning.
I have really given up all hope of creating anything while I remain here, or, indeed, until my condition shall have altered and my occupation changed.
What material I can glean here, from this beautiful and legendary land,—this land of perfume and of dreams,—must be chiselled into shape elsewhere.
One cannot write of these beautiful things while surrounded by them; and by an atmosphere, heavy and drowsy as that of a conservatory. It must be afterward, in times to come, when I shall find myself in some cold, bleak land where I shall dream regretfully of the graceful palms; the swamp groves, weird in their ragged robes of moss; the golden ripples of the cane-fields under the summer wind, and this divine sky—deep and vast and cloudless as Eternity, with its far-off horizon tint of tender green.
I do not wonder the South has produced nothing of literary art. Its beautiful realities fill the imagination to repletion. It is regret and desire and the Spirit of Unrest that provoketh poetry and romance. It is the North, with its mists and fogs, and its gloomy sky haunted by a fantastic and ever-changing panorama of clouds, which is the land of imagination and poetry.
The fever is dying. A mighty wind, boisterous and cool, lifted the poisonous air from the city at last.