ne had christened
him Mr. Baptiste long ago in the dim past, and it sufficed. No one had
ever been known who had the temerity to ask him for another cognomen,
for though he was a mild-mannered little man, he had an uncomfortable
way of shutting up oyster-wise and looking disagreeable when approached
concerning his personal history.

He was small: most Creole men are small when they are old. It is
strange, but a fact. It must be that age withers them sooner and more
effectually than those of un-Latinised extraction. Mr. Baptiste was,
furthermore, very much wrinkled and lame. Like the Son of Man, he had
nowhere to lay his head, save when some kindly family made room for him
in a garret or a barn. He subsisted by doing odd jobs, white-washing,
cleaning yards, doing errands, and the like.

The little old man was a frequenter of the levee. Never a day passed
that his quaint little figure was not seen moving up and down about the
ships. Chiefly did he haunt the Texas and Pacific warehouses and the
landing-place of the Morgan-line steamships. This seemed like madness,
for these spots are almost the busiest on the levee, and the rough
seamen and 'longshoremen have least time to be bothered with small weak
folks. Still there was method in the madness of Mr. Baptiste. The
Morgan steamships, as every one knows, ply between New Orleans and
Central and South American ports, doing the major part of the fruit
trade; and many were the baskets of forgotten fruit that Mr. Baptiste
took away with him unmolested. Sometimes, you know, bananas and
mangoes and oranges and citrons will half spoil, particularly if it has
been a bad voyage over the stormy Gulf, and the officers of the ships
will give away stacks of fruit, too good to go into the river, too bad
to sell to the fruit-dealers.

You could see Mr. Baptiste trudging up the street with his quaint
one-sided walk, bearing his dilapidated basket on one shoulder, a
nondescript head-cover pulled over his eyes, whistling cheerily. Then
he would slip in at the back door of one of his clients with a brisk,--

"Ah, bonjour, madame. Now here ees jus' a lil' bit fruit, some
bananas. Perhaps madame would cook some for Mr. Baptiste?"

And madame, who understood and knew his ways, would fry him some of the
bananas, and set it before him, a tempting dish, with a bit of madame's
bread and meat and coffee thrown in for lagniappe; and Mr. Baptiste
would depart, filled and contented, l