Lafcadio Hearn

“ Sometimes, however, there were sinister sounds as of men's voices raised in anger, and at intervals the deep laugh of the mysterious woman, long and loud and clear, and vibrant with mockery.
The servant was a mulattress, tall and solidly constructed as a caryatid of bronze. She was not less of a mystery than her mistress. She spoke French and Spanish with equal facility, but these only on rare occasions. Generally no mute in the seraglio of a Sultan could be more silent or more impassible. She never smiled. She never gossiped. ”

“ For in this season is the glamour of New Orleans strongest upon those whom she attracts to her from less hospitable climates, and fascinates by her nights of magical moonlight, and her days of dreamy languors and perfumes. There are few who can visit her for the first time without delight; and few who can ever leave her without regret; and none who can forget her strange charm when they have once felt its influence. ”

“ When a man enters his house he wishes to be able when he pleases to shut himself up from the rest of the world, to be alone with his family or with his thoughts, to rest himself after the day's anxieties without further turmoil or annoyance. But how is he to do this when he finds only a partition thin as the cover of a novel between himself and others who are not of his family, and who live practically on the same floor and almost in the same room? ”

“ Does it not seem magical that a woman can, by a little bright velvet and shimmering silk, thus make herself a fairy? And the glorious Night is approaching — this quaint old-time night, star-jeweled, fantastically robed; and the blue river is bearing us fleets of white boats thronged with strangers who doubtless are dreaming of lights and music, the tepid, perfumed air of Rex's Palace, and the motley rout of merry ghosts, droll goblins, and sweet fairies, who will dance the dance of the Carnival until blue day puts out at once the trembling tapers of the stars and the lights of the great ball. ”

“ A fountain murmured faintly near the entrance of the western piazza; and there came from the shadows of the fig-tree the sweet and plaintive cooing of amorous doves. Without, cotton-floats might rumble, and street-cars vulgarly jingle their bells; but these were mere echoes of the harsh outer world which disturbed not the delicious quiet within — where sat, in old-fashioned chairs, good old-fashioned people who spoke the tongue of other times, and observed many quaint and knightly courtesies forgotten in this material era. Without, roared the Iron Age, the angry waves of American traffic ”

“ But yesterday we received a visit from an old resident of thirty years' standing, who in the course of a conversation summed up his opinion of New Orleans with the phrase: "New Orleans is a city where it is impossible to make a home for one's self without marrying. I have tried for thirty years to make a home here, and failed." And this observation set us to meditating whether this were, indeed owing to any peculiarity of the city, or to that vague longing for the quiet comforts of a household which all bachelors fell as life creeps by and each succeeding winter adds its frost to their beards. ”

“ Banana-trees nodded sleepily their plumes of emerald green at the farther end of the garden; vines smothered the windows of the dining-room, and formed a bower of cool green about the hospitable door; an aged fig-tree, whose gnarled arms trembled under the weight of honeyed fruit, shadowed the square of bright lawn which formed a natural carpet in the midst; and at intervals were stationed along the walks in large porcelain vases — like barbaric sentinels in sentry-boxes — gorgeous broad-leaved things, with leaves fantastic and barbed and flowers brilliant as hummingbirds. ”

“ I offer thee eternal summer, and a sky divinely blue; sweet breezes and sweet perfumes, bright fruits, and flowers fairer than the rainbow. Rest with me. For if thou leavest me, thou must forever remember me with regret." And assuredly those who wander from her may never cease to behold her in their dreams—quaint, beautiful, and sunny as of old—and to feel at long intervals the return of the first charm—the first delicious fascination of the fairest city of the South. ”

“ Sensitive to the beauties of Nature, — a trait for which he has ever been famous since that primeval morning when, hiding in the leafy shadows of Paradise, he beheld fair Eve admiring the reflection of her snowy limbs in the crystal waters of Gehon, — the Devil could not suppress a sigh of regret as he gazed with far-reaching eyes along the old-fashioned streets of the city, whose gables were bronzed by the first yellow glow of sunrise. ”

“ A CREOLE TYPE [1]
It is a little curious how the old Creole element preserves its ancient customs and manners in the very heart of the changes that are going on about it. At half-past nine or ten o'clock the American city is all alive — a blaze of gas and a whirl of pleasure. The old French town is asleep; the streets are deserted; and the shadow of a pedestrian makes a moving black speck against the moonlight on the pavement only at long intervals. ”

“ Alligator, crocodile, or cayman — it matters little — they alike belong to the age before which history began.
And looking upon them, must not one dream of the sacred Ganges and the most ancient Nile — of South American rivers that flow by dead palaces buried in the vegetation of virgin forests — of dead civilizations — of Karnac and Thebes and Crocodilopolis — of catacombs and broken-limbed colossi — of empires and of races that have been swallowed up by Time? The world has changed, but the Giant Lizard changes not. ”

“ Their stone eyes have never gazed upon the glory of Canal Street; their marble ears have never hearkened to the gossip of politicians; their rigid forms have never left the enclosure of the wooden coffins into which they were first packed for importation. They sleep in the awful silence and darkness of the most dismal chamber in the whole gray building. They sleep, and the dust thickens upon their faces ”

“ It is rather ghastly to have death in the midst of life as we have it in New Orleans; but ghastlier when it is presented without even the ordinary masks. The skeleton of our public closet is exposed to broad daylight. Are we becoming like the Orientals who never repair? — do we accept all things with the fatalistic Kismet? Our bat-haunted prisons and our ruined cemeteries seem to answer in the affirmative.
They are hideous Golgothas, these old intramural cemeteries of ours. In other cities the cemeteries are beautiful with all that the art of the gardener and the sculptor can give. ”

“ They read character with astonishing quickness, and once acquainted with the disposition of their employer will always anticipate his humors and make themselves pliable to his least wish. They are the most admirable waiting-machines which ever existed; — absolutely heartless, without a particle of affection or real respect for an employer or his children, yet simulating love and respect so well that no possible fault can be found with them. Once initiated into the ways of a household, it is seldom necessary to give them an order. They know everything that is required, and everything is done. ”

“ If the woman did not hear the compliment, she had at least heard the Spanish tongue; for she suddenly turned, and, poised in an attitude of supreme grace like a statue of bronze, addressed the artista in a voice clear as a silver bell: — "A quien busca V., señor?" And their black eyes met. It was a tropical look: the man fascinated by the serpent grace of the woman; the woman not seeking to conceal her admiration of the handsome youth before her. Yes: she knew where the consul — Señor Don Alejandro — lived. ”

“ That is a matter not always easy to find out. The hard echo of a brisk footstep on the pavement, even the sudden fluttering of a leafy shadow, seems often sufficient to break the reverie; the speaker looks about him like one awakened from a dream, gazes with a half-timid kind of suspicion at those who pass by, as if fearing to have been overheard; and walks off at a quicker gait. To study the character of these people perfectly, one must wear rubber shoes. ”

“ The husband, a Cuban, who had often heard the story of the sailor, naturally understood and accepted the situation; while the little Mexican poured out his soul in comparisons of the young wife to guardian angels and saints and virgins, and in those strangely beautiful Spanish compliments which, when sincerely uttered, caress the soul of the hearer. And then, unfastening the strap of his basket and exposing its tempting cargo of luscious fruits and rich flowers, he besought her, upon his knees, to permit him to bear it to her residence as a gift. ”

“ Now, can you imagine such a visage transformed and softened by youth and femininity, made beautiful without losing its strength of menacing wickedness; the nose a little less rugged, the eyes a little larger, the brows a little lighter? Then you have before you an idea of the dancer's face. ”

“ And strangers visiting us have said: "The people of New Orleans are inclined to madness; they converse continually with themselves, which is a sign of insanity." Is it that the people are being driven mad by stupid legislation and business losses and outrageous taxes? God only knows! But they do talk either to themselves or to viewless beings or to the sleepy shadows that fling jagged bits of darkness across the streets on sunny days. ”

“ A guitar lay upon the rustic bench near the fountain, where it had evidently been forgotten, and a silk fan beside it; a European periodical, with graceful etchings, hung upon the back of a rocking-chair at the door, through which one caught glimpses of a snowy table bearing bottles of good Bordeaux, and inhaled the odor of rich West India tobacco. And yet some people wonder that some other people never care to cross Canal Street. ”

“ Weaving the warp and woof of human destinies; — measuring terms of life as the stems of flowers are measured; —
Mystically mingling Evil with Good; Joy with Sorrow; Love with Grief; — tints of Passion with tints of Melancholy, — even as in a bouquet the hues of a hundred flowers are blended into one rich design.
Evanescent as the beauty of Woman are the colors of the flowers; — volatile their drowsy-sweet odors as the perfume of youth. ”

“ Is this strange New Orleans which grows up under Mr. Cable's wand our own New Orleans? It is; and yet it is something more. It is such a city as a wanderer sees by night in his dreams, who has left the shores of the Father of Waters for the icy winds and snow-shrouded scenes of some far-Northern winter ”

“ And as a flower between the leaves of a book, thou shalt be pressed between the marble covers of that ponderous volume in which Death, who is, alas! strong as Love, keeps the weird record of his deeds. ”

“ Even the few unimpassional spectators who remain maskless and motionless form so strange a contrast that they seem like watchers in a haunted palace silently gazing upon a shadowy festival which occurs only once a year in the great hall exactly between the hours of twelve and three. While the most beautiful class of costumes seem ghostly only in that they really do belong to past ages, the more grotesque and outlandish sort seem strangely suggestive of a goblin festival. ”

“ The Canadian French have, nevertheless, been among the most thrifty, energetic, and enterprising pioneers in the world; certainly no other men with Latin blood in their veins ever showed more endurance and daring than the famous coureurs des bois and chasseurs de loutre. If the French Canadian is to be absorbed by the Anglo-Saxon element, we cannot avoid asking ourselves what chance the French element of Louisiana can have to resist absorption when the flood of emigration begins to pour southward with the advancing lines of railway? ”

“ They enjoy life too, in a peculiar fashion which the generality of quiet people of regular habits do not understand. But there are many who, desiring to continue single, and obliged to live where tune has cast their lot or run the risk of losing all and beginning the struggle with the world over again, do forever pursue after the chimera of a home, and cannot understand, until they have tried all possible expedients and suffered all varieties, of disappointments, why they cannot make a home for themselves. ”

“ I am a juggler that can handle fire without burning my fingers. I can touch pitch and not be defiled. No man can boast of the contrary. There are liars who say such things about all stage characters; but what do I care? I have made men pay well for all that men have said about me.
"Afraid? Pooh! Of what? I know desperate men when I see them. I have not lived and traveled for nothing. And I calculate my time nicely. I know just what I can accomplish during my stay in a city. And do you know that no man has dared to insult my face? ”