The Creoles Of New Orleans

"One of the most distinguished qualities of tlie Creóle is his conservatism," writes Ruth McEnery Stuart in an article on ''A People Who Live Amid Romance," in the Christmaa Ladies Houw Journal. "His family traditions are of obedience and respect. It begins in his church and ends in his wine-cellar. He cares not for protesting faiths or new vintages. His religión and his wines are matters of tradition. Good enough for his ancestors, are they not good enough for him and his children? His most delightful home is situated behind a heavy battened gate, sombre and forbidding in its outward expression- asking nothing of the passing world, protectiug every sacredness within. The Creóle lives for his family- in it. The gentle old dame, his great-aunt, perhaps, and nènaine to half his children, after living her sheltered and contented life of threescore and ten years behind the great green gate that opens as a creaking event at the demand of the polished brass knocker, will teil' you with beautiíul pride that she has never been on the American side of her own city - above Canal Street. If she will admit you as her guest to her inland garden, within her countyard gate - and be sure she wifl not do so unless you present unquestionable credentials - if she will cali her stately tignoned negress, Madelaine, Celeste, Marie or Zulime, who answers her in her own tongue, to fetch a chair for you into the eourt beside the oleander tree and the crêpe myrtle- if, seeingyou seated, she bid the maid of the tignon to further serve you with orange-flower syrup or thimble glasses of liqueur or anisette from a shining old silver tray, you will, perhaps, feel that the great battened door has been,indeed, a conserver of good old ways, and that its office is a worthy one, in preserving the sweet flavor of a picturesque hospitiality whose Old World fragrance is still unspoiled by innovations, and untainted by emulation or contact."