l setting, and so picturesque a confusion of liquid tongues as
exists in the old Franco-Spanish-Afro-Italian-American city of New
Orleans, there would seem to be nothing left to be desired as
"material." The artist who seized instinctively this opportunity was
born at New Orleans on October 12th, 1844, of colonial Virginia stock on
the one side, and New England on the other. His early life was full of
vicissitudes, and he was over thirty before he discovered story-telling
to be his true vocation. From that time he has diligently followed it,
having published three novels, 'The Grandissimes,' 'Dr. Sevier,'
'Bonaventure,' and 'John March, Southerner,' besides another volume of
short stories.

That having received his impressions in the period of transition and
ferment following the upheaval of 1861-1865, with the resulting
exaggerations and distortions of a normal social condition, he chose to
lay his scenes a half-century earlier, proclaims him still more the
artist; who would thus gain a freer play of fancy and a surer
perspective, and who, saturated with his subject, is not afraid to trust
his imagination to interpret it.

That he saw with open sympathetic eyes and a loving heart, he who runs
may read in any chance page that a casual opening of his books will
reveal. That the people whom he has so affectionately depicted have not
loved him in return, is perhaps only a corroboration of his own words
when he wrote, in his charming tale 'Belles Demoiselles Plantation,'
"The Creoles never forgive a public mention." That they are tender of
heart, sympathetic, and generous in their own social and domestic
relations, Mr. Cable's readers cannot fail to know. But the caste line
has ever been a dangerous boundary--a live wire charged with a deadly if
invisible fluid--and he is a brave man who dares lay his hand upon it.

More than this, the old-time Creole was an aristocrat who chose to
live behind a battened door, as does his descendant to-day. His
privacy, so long undisturbed, has come to be his prerogative.
Witness this spirit in the protest of the inimitable Jean-ah
Poquelin--the hero giving his name to one of the most dramatic stories
ever penned--when he presents himself before the American governor of
Louisiana to declare that he will not have his privacy invaded by a
proposed street to pass his door:--"I want you tell Monsieur le
President, _strit--can't--pass--at--me--'ouse_." The Creoles of Mr.
Cable's generation ar