onds in that storm when the
wind reached a velocity of 140 miles per hour at the mouth of the
Mississippi, that it blew for four hours at the rate of 90 miles, and
that the lowest barometrical reading ever recorded in the United States
(28.11) was recorded in New Orleans during this hurricane.

Of the summer climate of New Orleans I know nothing at first hand, and
judging from what people have told me, that is all I want to know. The
winter climate suited me very well while I was there, although the boast
that grass is green and roses bloom all the year round, does not imply
such intense heat as some people may suppose. Furthermore, I believe
that the thermometer has once or twice in the history of the city
dropped low enough to kill any ordinary rose, for a friend of mine told
me a story about some water pipes that froze and burst during an
unprecedented cold snap which occurred some years ago. He said that an
English colonel, whom he knew, was visiting the city at the time and
that, finding himself unable to get water in his bathtub, he sent out
for several cases of Apollinaris, and with true British phlegm proceeded
to empty them into the tub and get in among the bubbles.

Still another figure having to do with literature, and also with the
history of New Orleans, is Jean Lafitte, known as a pirate, whose life
is said to have inspired Byron's poem, "The Corsair." There was a time,
long ago, when Lafitte, together with his brother, his doughty
lieutenant, Dominique You, and his rabble of Baratarians, caused New
Orleans a great deal of annoyance, but like many other doubtful
characters, they have, since their death, become entirely picturesque,
and the very idea that Lafitte was not a first-class blood-and-thunder
pirate is as distasteful to the people of New Orleans to-day, as his
being any kind of a near-pirate at all, used to be to their ancestors.
Nevertheless Frank R. Stockton, who made a great specialty of pirates,
says of Lafitte: "He never committed an act of piracy in his life; he
was [before he went to Barataria] a blacksmith, and knew no more about
sailing a ship or even the smallest kind of a boat than he knew about
the proper construction of a sonnet.... It is said of him that he was
never at sea but twice in his life: once when he came from France, and
once when he left this country, and on neither occasion did he sail
under the Jolly Roger." According to Stockton, Lafitte, when he gave up
his blacksmith