Studies in the South and West, with Comments on CanadaWarner, Charles Dudley
History
Studies in the South and West, with Comments on Canada
Warner, Charles Dudley
Canada -- Description and travel; United States -- Description and travel
I have no doubt, from what I hear and my limited observation, that all
this coast about New Orleans would be a favorite winter resort if it had
hotels as good as, for instance, that at Pass Christian. The region
has many attractions for the idler and the invalid. It is, in the first
place, interesting; it has a good deal of variety of scenery and of
historical interest; there is excellent fishing and shooting; and if the
visitor tires of the monotony of the country, he can by a short ride on
cars or a steamer transfer himself for a day or a week to a large and
most hospitable city, to society, the club, the opera, balls, parties,
and every variety of life that his taste craves. The disadvantage of
many Southern places to which our Northern regions force us is that they
are uninteresting, stupid, and monotonous, if not malarious. It seems
a long way from New York to New Orleans, but I do not doubt that the
region around the city would become immediately a great winter resort if
money and enterprise were enlisted to make it so.
New Orleans has never been called a “strait-laced” city; its Sunday
is still of the Continental type; but it seems to me free from the
socialistic agnosticism which flaunts itself more or less in Cincinnati,
St. Louis, and Chicago; the tone of leading Presbyterian churches is
distinctly Calvinistic, one perceives comparatively little of religious
speculation and doubt, and so far as I could see there is harmony
and entire social good feeling between the Catholic and Protestant
communions. Protestant ladies assist at Catholic fairs, and the
compliment is returned by the society ladies of the Catholic faith when
a Protestant good cause is to be furthered by a bazaar or a “pink tea.”
Denominational lines seem to have little to do with social affiliations.
There may be friction in the management of the great public charities,
but on the surface there is toleration and united good-will. The
Catholic faith long had the prestige of wealth, family, and power, and
the education of the daughters of Protestant houses in convent schools
tended to allay prejudice. Notwithstanding the reputation New Orleans
has for gayety and even frivolity—and no one can deny the fast
and furious living of ante-bellum days—it possesses at bottom an
old-fashioned religious simplicity. If any one thinks that “faith” has
died out of modern life, let him visit the mortuary chapel of St. Roch.
In a distant part of the town, beyond the street of the Elysian Fields,
and on Washington avenue, in a district very sparsely built up, is
the Campo Santo of the Catholic Church of the Holy Trinity. In this
foreign-looking cemetery is the pretty little Gothic Chapel of St. Roch,
having a background of common and swampy land. It is a brown stuccoed
edifice, wholly open in front, and was a year or two ago covered with
beautiful ivy. The small interior is paved in white marble, the windows
are stained glass, the side-walls are composed of tiers of vaults, where
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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