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
