y. Splendidly maidenly it should be, harrowingly
arduous to the proud invader, and long drawn out. Constance should see
what a man can be put through. But oh, but oh, if, after all, the
invasion should not come!

In those days New Orleans paved her favorite streets, when she paved
them at all, with big blocks of granite two feet by one. They came from
the North as ballast in those innumerable wide-armed ships whose cloud
of masts and cordage inspiringly darkened the sky of that far-winding
river-front where we lately saw Hilary Kincaid and Fred Greenleaf ride.
Beginning at the great steamboat landing, half a mile of Canal Street
had such a pavement on either side of its broad grassy "neutral ground."
So had the main streets that led from it at right angles. Long
afterward, even as late as when the Nineteenth Century died, some of
those streets were at the funeral, clad in those same old pavements,
worn as smooth and ragged as a gentleman-beggar's coat. St. Charles
Street was one. Another was the old Rue Royale, its squat ground-floor
domiciles drooping their mossy eaves half across the pinched sidewalks
and confusedly trying to alternate and align themselves with tall brick
houses and shops whose ample two-and three-story balconies were upheld,
balustraded, and overhung by slender garlandries of iron openwork as
graceful and feminine as a lace mantilla. With here and there the flag
of a foreign consul hanging out and down, such is the attire the old
street was vain of in that golden time when a large square sign on every
telegraph pole bade you get your shirts at S.N. Moody's, corner of Canal
and Royal Streets.

At this corner, on the day after the serenade, there was a dense,
waiting crowd. On the other corner of Royal, where the show-windows of
Hyde & Goodrich blazed with diamonds, and their loftily nested gold
pelican forever fed her young from her bleeding breast, stood an equal
throng. Across Canal Street, where St. Charles opens narrowly southward,
were similar masses, and midway between the four corners the rising
circles of stone steps about the high bronze figure of Henry Clay were
hidden by men and boys packed as close as they could sit or stand. A
great procession had gone up-town and would by and by return. Near and
far banners and pennons rose and fell on the luxurious air, and the
ranks and ranks of broad and narrow balconies were so many gardens of
dames and girls, parasols, and diaphanous gowns. Near th