Life In New Orleans

The singular dual life of the Crescent City took vehement hold of the imagiiiation of the oíd clergyman. On one side of its great artery, Canal street, is a powerful American city, ñ'rmly established, fully abreast of the trade and industry of the time, and clutching eagerly for its share of the commeree of the world. It is vitalized now with an energy which, if not pure Yankee in character, is very closely akin to it. Here are miles of wharves heaped with cotton and sugar; thorouzhfares massively built, throush which the endless tides of human life ebb and flow all day ; magniflcent avenues stretehing away out to the country, lined with modern hotels, club houses and huge dwellings. each flanked by one or two picturesque towers, which, on inspection, turn out to be only cisterns. There is the necessary complement of black shadow below these vivid high lights. Poverty and vice live more out of doors in New Orleans thau in northern cities. There they are, barefaced, leering, always on the familiar pave, to be seen and known of all .nen. Back of all signs of wealth and gayety, too, is the mud, a material, clamniy horror. The water, a deadly enemy here, perpetually fought and forced back, rushes in, whenever a day's rain gives it vantage, at every crevice, floods the streets and clogs the drains. It oozes out of the groutid wherever you step on it, drips down the walls of your drawing room, stains your books a coffee color, clings to you, oliilly and damp, in your clothes and in your bed, turns the air you breathe hito a cold strcam, and washes your dead out of their graves. So the oíd man and the girl, being about the same age (-'as oíd as the Babes in the VVood," quoth JIrs. Ely), fell into the habit ot strolling in the early morningor gathering twilight through the network of odiily silent streets, so narro w that the overhanging eaves nearly met over the cobblestone pavements. Steep roofs, scaled with earthen tiles and green with moss, hooded dorraer Windows peeping out of them like half shut eyes, rose abruptly from the one storied houses. Here and there a cobbler sat on nis bench in èhe street plying his awl and singing to himself, or a group of svvarthy, half naked boys knelt on the banquette, flingiug their arms about in a gambling game for pennies, and shriekilig in some wild dialect, half negro and half French. Their walks usually ended on the Boulevard Esplenade. Even that wide thoroughfare feil into quiet in the afternoon as the long shadows of the trees lay heavily across it. Witbin the close walls they could catch a glimpse of the courts about which the houses are built, the glitter of fountains shaded by orange trees and broad leaved tropical plants. Sometimesajalousied window would be left open, and they would catch the tinlcle of a guitar or the sound of a woman's voice singing. - Rebecea Harding Davis in Harper's Magazine.