it, the city kept to
its daily routine, limp and unmeaning though much of it had come to be.
The milkman, of course, held to his furious round in his comical
two-wheeled cart, whirling up to alley gates, shouting and ringing his
big hand-bell. In all his tracks followed the hooded bread-cart, with
its light-weight loaves for worthless money and with only the staggering
news for lagnappe. Families ate breakfast, one hour and another,
wherever there was food. Day cabmen and draymen trotted off to their
curbstones; women turned to the dish-pan, the dust-pan, the beds, the
broom; porters, clerks and merchants--the war-mill's wasteful refuse and
residuum, some as good as the gray army's best, some poor enough--went
to their idle counters, desks and sidewalks; the children to the public
schools, the beggar to the church doorstep, physicians to their sick,
the barkeeper to his mirrors and mint, and the pot-fisher to his catfish
lines in the swollen, sweeping, empty harbor.

But besides the momentum of habit there was the official pledge to the
people--Mayor Monroe's and Commanding-General Lovell's--that if they
would but keep up this tread-mill gait, the moment the city was really
in danger the wires of the new fire-alarm should strike the tidings from
all her steeples. So the school teachers read Scripture and prayers and
the children sang the "Bonnie Blue Flag," while outside the omnibuses
trundled, the one-mule street-cars tinkled and jogged and the bells hung
mute.

Nevertheless a change was coming. Invisibly it worked in the general
mind as that mind gradually took in the meanings of the case; but
visibly it showed as, from some outpost down the river, General Lovell,
(a sight to behold for the mud on him), came spurring at full speed by
Callender House, up through the Creole Quarter and across wide Canal
Street to the St. Charles. Now even more visibly it betrayed itself,
where all through the heart of the town began aides, couriers and
frowning adjutants to gallop from one significant point to another.
Before long not a cab anywhere waited at its stand. Every one held an
officer or two, if only an un-uniformed bank-officer or captain of
police, and rattled up or down this street and that, taking corners at
breakneck risks. That later the drays began to move was not so
noticeable, for a dray was but a dray and they went off empty except for
their drivers and sometimes a soldier with a musket and did not return.
Moreove