Old Creole Days

amilies. His dwelling was a little frame cottage, standing on high pillars just inside a tall, close fence, and reached by a narrow out-door stair from the green batten gate. It was well sur

escaped "Paxton's Directory" "so as by fire." His parlor was dingy and carpetless; one could smell distinctly there the vow of poverty. His bed-chamber was bare and clean, and the bed in it narrow and hard; but between the two was a dining-room that would tempt a laugh to the lips of any who looked in. The table was small, but stout, and all the furniture of the room s

etful rememberers of a fourth comrade who was a comrade no more. Like Père Jerome, they had come, through years, to the thick of life's conflicts,-the priest's brother-in-law a physician, the other an attorney, and brother-in-law to the lonely wanderer,-yet they loved to huddle around this small board, and be boys again in he

the conversation for the most part being in French, the native tongue of the doctor and priest, and spoken with facility by Jean Thompson th

nced an idea som

and how much to our brothers or our fathers. We all participate in one another's sins. There is a community of responsibility attaching to every misdeed. No human since Adam-nay, no

ician, "you think we are partly to blame for t

Jerome

g another people, reared under wiser care and with better companions, how different might he not have been! How can we speak of him as a law-breaker who might have saved him from that name?" Here the speaker turned to Jean Thompson, and chang

son answer

ot have let h

, fo'

eld his reputation. You should have said,"-the attorney changed to French,-"'He is no pirate; he h

rillat, and both he and his bro

" demande

n, with a shrug, "say i

s, he was about to add somethi

; 'tis a terrible fo' him. He stum'le in de dark; but dat good God will

is a pirate?" demanded

n of the ninety-and-nine stories that come to us, from every port where ships arrive from the no

See gazettes

Lafitte," said the

ss, is not Lafitte,"

d Doctor Varrillat. "

er the board and spoke, with

t Monday. You have heard that she was boarded by pirates,

le story," s

utiful than ever in the desperation of the moment, confronted him with a small missal spread open, and her finger on the Apostles' Creed, commanded him to read. He read it, uncovering his head as he read, th

n to the attorney and back again, on

lish, they say," s

arned it since he lef

r, too, says his men

t see? It is your broth

ther! Not Lafitte, bu

pitaine Ursi

with a growing drollery on either fa

ree rose up, "you juz kip dad co

e's eyes l

n' to

ravity, "iv dad is troo, I tell you w'ad is sure-sure! Ursi

rning to Jean Thompson

ro

it in dad summon dad '

im attributing solely to the influences of surrounding nature, may find for some a more sufficient explanation in the fact that this lett