beautiful
building; massive, substantial, full of architectural graces; no shams
or false pretenses or uglinesses about it anywhere. To the city, it will
be worth many times its cost, for it will breed its species. What has
been lacking hitherto, was a model to build toward; something to educate
eye and taste; a SUGGESTER, so to speak.

The city is well outfitted with progressive men--thinking, sagacious,
long-headed men. The contrast between the spirit of the city and the
city's architecture is like the contrast between waking and sleep.
Apparently there is a 'boom' in everything but that one dead feature.
The water in the gutters used to be stagnant and slimy, and a potent
disease-breeder; but the gutters are flushed now, two or three times a
day, by powerful machinery; in many of the gutters the water never
stands still, but has a steady current. Other sanitary improvements
have been made; and with such effect that New Orleans claims to be
(during the long intervals between the occasional yellow-fever assaults)
one of the healthiest cities in the Union. There's plenty of ice now
for everybody, manufactured in the town. It is a driving place
commercially, and has a great river, ocean, and railway business. At
the date of our visit, it was the best lighted city in the Union,
electrically speaking. The New Orleans electric lights were more
numerous than those of New York, and very much better. One had this
modified noonday not only in Canal and some neighboring chief streets,
but all along a stretch of five miles of river frontage. There are good
clubs in the city now--several of them but recently organized--and
inviting modern-style pleasure resorts at West End and Spanish Fort.
The telephone is everywhere. One of the most notable advances is in
journalism. The newspapers, as I remember them, were not a striking
feature. Now they are. Money is spent upon them with a free hand. They
get the news, let it cost what it may. The editorial work is not hack-
grinding, but literature. As an example of New Orleans journalistic
achievement, it may be mentioned that the 'Times-Democrat' of August 26,
1882, contained a report of the year's business of the towns of the
Mississippi Valley, from New Orleans all the way to St. Paul--two
thousand miles. That issue of the paper consisted of forty pages; seven
columns to the page; two hundred and eighty columns in all; fifteen
hundred words to the column; an aggregate of fou