THE DANCE IN PLACE CONGO[1]
I. CONGO SQUARE
Whoever has been to New Orleans with eyes not totally abandoned to buying and selling will, of course, remember St. Louis Cathedral, looking southeastward—riverward—across quaint Jackson Square, the old Place d'Armes. And if he has any feeling for flowers, he has not forgotten the little garden behind the cathedral, so antique and unexpected, named for the beloved old priest Père Antoine.
The old Rue Royale lies across the sleeping garden's foot. On the street's farther side another street lets away at right angles, northwestward, straight, and imperceptibly downward from the cathedral and garden toward the rear of the city. It is lined mostly with humble ground-floor-and-garret houses of stuccoed brick, their wooden doorsteps on the brick sidewalks. This is Orleans Street, so named when the city was founded.
Its rugged round-stone pavement is at times nearly as sunny and silent as the landward side of a coral reef. Thus for about half a mile; and then Rampart Street, where the palisade wall of the town used to run in Spanish days, crosses it, and a public square just beyond draws a grateful canopy of oak and sycamore boughs. That is the Place. One may shut his buff umbrella there, wipe the beading sweat from the brow, and fan himself with his hat. Many's the bullfight has taken place on that spot Sunday afternoons of the old time. That is Congo Square.
The trees are modern. So are the buildings about the four sides, for all their aged looks. So are all the grounds adornments. Trémé market, off beyond, toward the swamp, is not
- ↑ Owing to inability to secure permission from the publishers of Mr. Cable's works to include a selection from his short stories or his novels, I have availed myself of this vivid sketch of a characteristic feature of the old life of New Orleans. The article was originally contributed to the Century Magazine, Vol. XXXI, page 517.
