fatigue, and the shade of gravity in them
is deepened by a certain worn look of excess--in books; a most unusual
look in New Orleans in those days, and pointedly out of keeping with the
scene which was absorbing his attention.

You might mistake the time for mid-May. Before the view lies the Place
d'Armes in its green-breasted uniform of new spring grass crossed
diagonally with white shell walks for facings, and dotted with the
_elite_ of the city for decorations. Over the line of shade-trees which
marks its farther boundary, the white-topped twin turrets of St. Louis
Cathedral look across it and beyond the bared site of the removed
battery (built by the busy Carondelet to protect Louisiana from herself
and Kentucky, and razed by his immediate successors) and out upon the
Mississippi, the color of whose surface is beginning to change with the
changing sky of this beautiful and now departing day. A breeze, which is
almost early June, and which has been hovering over the bosom of the
great river and above the turf-covered levee, ceases, as if it sank
exhausted under its burden of spring odors, and in the profound calm the
cathedral bell strikes the sunset hour. From its neighboring garden, the
convent of the Ursulines responds in a tone of devoutness, while from
the parapet of the less pious little Fort St. Charles, the evening gun
sends a solemn ejaculation rumbling down the "coast;" a drum rolls, the
air rises again from the water like a flock of birds, and many in the
square and on the levee's crown turn and accept its gentle blowing.
Rising over the levee willows, and sinking into the streets,--which are
lower than the water,--it flutters among the balconies and in and out of
dim Spanish arcades, and finally drifts away toward that part of the sky
where the sun is sinking behind the low, unbroken line of forest. There
is such seduction in the evening air, such sweetness of flowers on its
every motion, such lack of cold, or heat, or dust, or wet, that the
people have no heart to stay in-doors; nor is there any reason why they
should. The levee road is dotted with horsemen, and the willow avenue on
the levee's crown, the whole short mile between Terre aux Boeufs gate on
the right and Tchoupitoulas gate on the left, is bright with
promenaders, although the hour is brief and there will be no twilight;
for, so far from being May, it is merely that same nineteenth of which
we have already spoken,--the nineteenth of Louisian