Creole Sketches/A Visit to New Orleans
A VISIT TO NEW ORLEANS[1]
The Devil arrived at New Orleans early yesterday morning, having left his winter residence in Chicago at midnight. There was little need, he thought, to bother himself further about Chicago during the present summer, as he holds a mortgage upon that city, which has at present no prospect of being able to prevent him from foreclosing.
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. "Ah!" he exclaimed, "is this, indeed, the great City of Pleasure, the Sybaris of America, the fair capital which once seemed to slumber in enchanted sunlight, and to exhale a perfume of luxury even as the palaces of the old Cæsars? Her streets are surely green with grass; her palaces are gray with mould; and her glory is departed from her. And perhaps her good old sins have also departed with her glory; for riches are a snare, and gold is a temptation." And the Devil frowned anxiously, and his deep eyes glowed under his brows even as smouldering charcoal glows in the shadows of night.
The Devil had not been in New Orleans since the period of Reconstruction — a period at which, our readers may remember, it was proverbially said that New Orleans was "going to the Devil." Such also appears to have been the Devil's own personal opinion. He found things in such a condition about that time that he had not been able to find room in his voluminous breast-pockets for all the mortgages which he had obtained upon men's souls; and believing, from the mad career of Radicalism, that the whole city must be made over to him in the course of a few years, he had departed elsewhere in search of employment. "They have no need of me," said the Devil, "in the State of Louisiana."
The history of the overthrow of Radicalism, however, which the Devil read in the Chicago Times, filled him with consternation. He had a gigantic job on his hands in Chicago, and could not just then afford to leave Illinois, for reasons which we have at the present writing no need to specify. But the rumor of a reform in politics in Louisiana, and a just government, pleased him not at all; and he felt exceedingly anxious to visit the Crescent City. It happened, however, that he could not get away until the midnight between the death of Thursday and the birth of Friday. And, moreover, the Devil has private reasons for objecting to travel on Friday.
The odor of the gutters displeased him as he walked down Saint Charles Street, and he stopped his nose with a handkerchief bearing a pattern border of green skeletons and red cupids intertwined upon a saffron ground. "Poverty and dirt are sometimes virtuous," said the Devil, as he proceeded on his way. At the next corner he bought all the papers of the previous day. He put the Picayune in his pistol-pocket; cursed the New Orleans Bee and the City Item, and, flinging them back upon the dealer's stand after a brief examination of their contents, he folded up the other papers in a bundle for future reference. "There is too much virtue in the press, I am afraid," said the Devil; "the Picayune is the only paper which suits me."
The police stations were next visited; and the Devil smiled a ghastly smile. "I have no fault to find with the police," he said; "and that reminds me that my own police force below is getting disorganized. I'll have to recruit in New Orleans."
An examination of the records in the Auditor's office tickled him, until he exploded in an abysmal laugh — a series of bass notes singularly like the famous laugh of Mephistopheles in Faust. "Why, this system is almost as good as Radicalism," he said. "Forty-five thousand dollars for running an Auditor's office!"
He next read the order of the Mayor to the colored churches, and nodded his head approvingly. "Good enough in its way," he said.
By twelve o'clock he had visited all the public institutions; — the Sanitary Association highly displeased him; but the Board of Health put him into an uproarious good humor. "I was a fool to come down here at all," he said; "this Board of Health can do my work better than I can do it myself, and the people seem to be just fools enough to let them do it. Instead of honest poverty, I find vicious poverty; instead of reform, demoralization; instead of law, I find lawyers; instead of justice, oppression. What Carnival King ever found a city so well prepared for him? I guess I shall leave at once; for I have no work to do as yet in Louisiana."
But before leaving, the Devil took a notion to alight upon the top of the State House to watch the Convention. He listened for several hours to the proceedings, much to his own surprise; and it was nearly three o'clock before he knew it.
"Half-past two o'clock on Friday," muttered the Devil; "and I have to be in Pandemonium by a quarter to three. I don't quite like the state of affairs in that old hotel; but I doubt if the situation really demands my presence; I think I shall send a subaltern up to the Convention; for the Devil's interests are not sufficiently represented. But I shall not come back here for twenty years. What is the use of staying in a city that is going just where I am going? Besides, if anything serious happens, my representative can inform me. They have an embargo on reform here, it seems to me — just as they have on commerce. After all, New Orleans in 1879 is not very much holier than New Orleans in 1866. I guess I'll adjourn."
And he adjourned, after having copied the word "Choppinism" into his new Dictionnaire Infernale.
- ↑ Item, May 10, 1879.