if this is what you call par excellence, go to it, but none of it for mine,” then, with a mouthful of ice, signalled the waiter. “Waiter,” he said, “kindly remove this bonfire and bring me a pineapple-frappée quick.” “Gumbo” was relished by the balance of the party, but Clark could never be induced to give it another trial.
The pool-rooms of the races along Royal Street are attractive halls of amusement; bookmakers screened from the patrons as the clerks of a bank; blackboards, on which appear the names of the horses, jockeys, weight carried, odds, and pedigrees, decorate the walls, everything being conducted with the same business decorum and excitement attending the stock operations of the New York “curb.” The telegraph ticks off the condition of the weather, the arrival of the horses at the post, the start, their position at the quarter, the half, the three-quarters, in the stretch, and under the wire, as a well-trained voice in the language of the turf calls off the results. Here one may play the races of any “meet” in the United States, lacking only in the excitement of seeing the horses dashing for the winning wire.
In the old “French quarter” a few blocks from Royal Street, along whose time-worn thoroughfare the past generations of “Nawrleans’” most exclusive Creole society basked in the sunshine of their graceful gentility, we saw some quaint sights amidst the chattering jargon of its people, principally among these being a quadroon ball, at which Creoles predominated, though almost indistinguishable from their quadroon sisters, whose beauty is their stock in trade, and whose mellow-toned voices drop the “r” in that quaint characteristic style of the Southern people. The luxuriousness of their costumes, pomp of procession, harmony of music, and grace of attitudes, all united in furnishing a scene of festive splendor.
In close proximity to Jackson Square, near the haunts of the “Vendetta” beautifully illustrated in the play of “Romeo and Juliet,” we visited a Creole resort, the interior of which resembled somewhat the subterrane of “Little Hungary,” the famous Bohemian hostelry of Houston Street, on New York’s east side. Here,
seated on a wine-cask, a fiddler bowed a “viola,” as the Creoles, in their primitive originality, and with all the inimitable grace of Loie Fuller in the “fire-dance,” performed the “Farandole” and the “La Bourree,” their beautiful bare arms in ornamental bracelets, shading the contortions of their movements, rising and falling in gesticulating harmony to the rhythm of the music, as the nymphs of an unexplored grotto. Nearby we were shown the old slave-market and block from which the auctioneer bartered his human wares to the highest bidder, their lives invariably to eventuate in the drudgery of the cotton fields.
Voudooism, which included all the intricacies of the black-art in prognosticating future events, flourished uninterrupted for years in New Orleans, until finally eradicated by the hands of authority. This superstitious form of worship was practised principally by the negroes, who carried its inheritance with the first trading vessel from the shores of Africa to the United States. We were told that the negroes would indulge
in the voudoo dances in uncontrollable frenzy, until, overcome from exhaustion, they would sink to the ground.
Stories are told of the handsome fortune-telling quadroon Madame La Bouchere, who held her court near the Bayou Saint John, and in whose sumptuous boudoir the patrons of her art, consisting not only of the bourgeoisie, but the Creole aristocracy, paid visits incognito to suffer the enchantments of the “goddess” of this shrine of sorcery. A landau driven to the door of this cypress-sheltered dwelling, there hastily alighted therefrom a veiled lady, who, carelessly brushing by the magnolias, vanished from view. In this green-curtained domicile the intrigues of forbidden love, deceptions, betrayals, and future certainties, would all be revealed to the satisfaction of the votary of this dark-eyed enchantress, without the evil eyes of the gossip-mongers to feast upon and scatter broadcast. Madame La Bouchere’s soft voice and alluring smiles have vanished with the strokes of time; in the slumberous shade of the willow she rests in a tomb of the old Metaire cemetery, her soul
having passed to the realm beyond this life.
The cemeteries of New Orleans have a particular charm, the bodies being buried above-ground. In handsome memorial to the Confederate soldiers, there have been erected gigantic mausoleums, shafts, and columns, monumentally inscribed to the memory of Louisiana’s departed heroes.