The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories, by
Alice Dunbar

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Title: The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories

Author: Alice Dunbar

Posting Date: July 26, 2008 [EBook #688]
Release Date: October, 1996

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GOODNESS OF ST. ROCQUE ***

Produced by Judith Boss. HTML version by Al Haines.

THE GOODNESS OF ST. ROCQUE AND OTHER STORIES

By

ALICE DUNBAR

To
My best Comrade
My Husband

CONTENTS

THE GOODNESS OF SAINT ROCQUE
TONY'S WIFE
THE FISHERMAN OF PASS CHRISTIAN
M'SIEU FORTIER'S VIOLIN
BY THE BAYOU ST. JOHN
WHEN THE BAYOU OVERFLOWS
MR. BAPTISTE
A CARNIVAL JANGLE
LITTLE MISS SOPHIE
SISTER JOSEPHA
THE PRALINE WOMAN
ODALIE
LA JUANITA
TITEE

THE GOODNESS OF SAINT ROCQUE

Manuela was tall and slender and graceful, and once you knew her the
lithe form could never be mistaken. She walked with the easy spring
that comes from a perfectly arched foot. To-day she swept swiftly down
Marais Street, casting a quick glance here and there from under her
heavy veil as if she feared she was being followed. If you had peered
under the veil, you would have seen that Manuela's dark eyes were
swollen and discoloured about the lids, as though they had known a
sleepless, tearful night. There had been a picnic the day before, and
as merry a crowd of giddy, chattering Creole girls and boys as ever you
could see boarded the ramshackle dummy-train that puffed its way
wheezily out wide Elysian Fields Street, around the lily-covered
bayous, to Milneburg-on-the-Lake. Now, a picnic at Milneburg is a
thing to be remembered for ever. One charters a rickety-looking,
weather-beaten dancing-pavilion, built over the water, and after
storing the children--for your true Creole never leaves the small folks
at home--and the baskets and mothers downstairs, the young folks go
up-stairs and dance to the tune of the best band you ever heard. For
what can equal the music of a violin, a guitar, a cornet, and a bass
viol to trip the quadrille to at a picnic?

Then one can fish in the lake