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Leaves from the diary of an impressionist
Leaves from the diary of an impressionist Author:Lafcadio Hearn Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: QUAINT NEW ORLEANS AND ITS HABITANTS I. FRENCH-TOWN Old New Orleans proper (French-Town, as it is termed by steamboatmen; Le Carre, as its own inhabitants ... more »call it) is principally, though not wholly, comprised in the great quadrilateral bounded by Canal, Esplanade, Rampart, and Old Levee streets. Where the horse-cars now run upon those thoroughfares formerly stood thebastioned walls of the colonial city, encircled by a deep moat. Double rows of trees now mark the old rampart lines upon three sides of the quadrilateral, and birds sing in their branches at just the height where brazen cannon once showed their black throats, where Swiss or Spanish sentries paced to and fro against the sky. Within the Carre the streets are serried, solid, and picturesque. Memories of aristocratic wealth still endure in certain vast mansions, broad-balconied and deep- courted, now mostly converted into hotels or lodging-houses, half the year void of guests; but the majority of the dwellings are rather curious than splendid. Nearly all the larger ones are built in the form of an L, the lower line of the letter representing the street front, the upper line a shallow but lofty wing reaching far back from the main building at right angles, and flanked by an enormous green or brown cistern as by a round tower. A really imposing archway often pierces the street facade — giving carriageway into the deep court — much like those quaint archways characteristic of old London taverns. Such a building often possesses three sets of stairways — invariably two — one for the main edifice, one for the wing. But these immense winter residences, once sheltering a population of servants and clients large as that comprised in the Roman familia, are now for the most part in a state of decay. There is much crumbling of w...« less