hour, through the longest day's hardest task: Their songs, their music, their patois, still remain to soothe children to sleep; to lighten the burdensome hour, and to fill many a lazy one; and how little could it all be spared from the life of the place! And in fact, how much of the noted events of the old life of the place do the songs preserve for us; Master Cayetane, who came from la Havane to Congo square with a circus (a dozen stanzas of wonders); the battle of New Orleans; the fine balls, the names of masters and mistresses and police officers; and always the biting sarcasms about the free quadroons and the mulattoes whom they called "mules"; the rogueries of this scamp, the airs and graces of that one, and a whole repertoire of garbled versions of love and drinking-songs picked up from the masters' table, as now they pick up politics and business gossip. Under the ancien régime, it was a favourite after-dinner entertainment to have the slaves come in and sing, rewarding them with glasses of wine and silver pieces. Louis Philippe (that ever glorious and appropriate Louisiana memory) was thus entertained. It seems almost impossible for a true child of New Orleans to speak without emotion of the Creole songs, they run such a gamut of local sentiment and love, from the past to the present. And as for the Creole music, it is quite permissible to say it in New Orleans, that no one has ever known the full poetry and inspiration of the dance who has not danced to the original music of a Macarty or a Basile Barès. And it is a pleasure to own the conviction, whether it can be maintained or not, with reason, that America will one day do homage for music of a fine and original type, to some representative of Louisiana's coloured population.
