You remember, of course, how long the strike lasted, and how many
battles were fought and lives lost before the final adjustment of
affairs. It was a fearsome war, and many forgot afterwards whose
was the first life lost in the struggle,--poor little Mr.
Baptiste's, whose body lay at the Morgue unclaimed for days
before it was finally dropped unnamed into Potter's Field.



A CARNIVAL JANGLE

There is a merry jangle of bells in the air, an all-pervading
sense of jester's noise, and the flaunting vividness of royal
colours. The streets swarm with humanity,--humanity in all
shapes, manners, forms, laughing, pushing, jostling, crowding, a
mass of men and women and children, as varied and assorted in
their several individual peculiarities as ever a crowd that
gathered in one locality since the days of Babel.

It is Carnival in New Orleans; a brilliant Tuesday in February,
when the very air gives forth an ozone intensely exhilarating,
making one long to cut capers. The buildings are a blazing mass
of royal purple and golden yellow, national flags, bunting, and
decorations that laugh in the glint of the Midas sun. The
streets are a crush of jesters and maskers, Jim Crows and clowns,
ballet girls and Mephistos, Indians and monkeys; of wild and
sudden flashes of music, of glittering pageants and comic ones,
of befeathered and belled horses; a dream of colour and melody
and fantasy gone wild in an effervescent bubble of beauty that