OLD SPANISH HOUSES.
If you should take your map of the United States and run your finger far down its surface until it rested upon the largest city in all the beautiful South, and the metropolis of a vast inner empire which holds two civilizations, one French-Spanish, one American, both slowly, very slowly, merging through the centuries; or, better still, if you should stroll along the streets on a sweet March day, peering into its curious quarters, watching the beautiful little children and the dark-eyed men and the gaily dressed women and all the throngs of people, city people who can never long remain away from the green fields and the noble old trees and the scent of the roses—then you could not fail to hit upon this charming old place, New Orleans—in many ways the most interesting of all the cities in America, the beautiful city that lives outdoors.
QUEER AMERICAN RIVERS
BY F. H. SPEARMAN
I wonder if my readers realize what a story of the vast extent of our country is told by its rivers?
Every variety of river in the world seems to have a cousin in our collection. What other country on the face of the globe affords such an assortment of streams for fishing and boating and swimming and skating—besides having any number of streams on which you can do none of these things? One can hardly imagine rivers like that; but we have them, plenty of them, as you shall see.
As for fishing, the American boy may cast his flies for salmon in the Arctic circle, or angle for sharks under a tropical sun in Florida, without leaving the domain of the American flag. But the fishing-rivers are not the most curious, nor the most instructive as to diversity of climate, soil, and that sort of thing—physical geography, the teacher calls it.
A LIVE-OAK WITH SPANISH MOSS.