Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 100, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 April 1915 — Ghost Invites New Orleans Girl to Dance Minuet [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Ghost Invites New Orleans Girl to Dance Minuet

NEW ORLEANS. —Legends like the fragrance of lavender bang about'the old buildings in Chartres street. Tenement houses now, in the old days they were the abodes of cavaliers and fair ladies. Even now when the lights

are out and the neighborhood is dark swords and silks swirl in ghostly sarabands as the dwellers of other days come back and take possession for the night of their former abodes. At least that is one of the legends, and the imaginative of the neighborhood will vouch for .its authenticity. Miss Lucile Lacoste, since she was, a little girl, has lived in one of these “haunted” tenements. She and her mother have a dingy little room, and oftentimes the girl would waken

her mother and bid her hearken to the gallants and their ladies as they danced the olden dances on the vacant floors below. Lately she had become imbued with the Idea that one of the cavaliers ‘nightly sought her for a partner in a minuet. The Idea of the phantom follower grew and grew until the girl could stand it no longer, and she decided to kill herself and to seek release from the “ghost” which followed her so relentlessly. Away from the city, in the swamps back of Port Chalmette, the girl poised on the railing of a bridge over a deep ravine}. She was ready to hurl herself over when she was discovered by Sheriff Fred Hahn of St. Bernard. She jumped into the water as Hahn rughed to the rescue. Hahn followed. In the water there was a struggle, the girl fighting to die, but at last she was pulled to the bank.