Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 February 1916 — Old Slave Mart New Orleans [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Old Slave Mart New Orleans

YOU are a lover of the quaint, the picturesque, the old, or you would not find yourself in the old slave mart of Le Vieux Carre de New Orleans on a glowering day, when the storm clouds overhanging the East are sending out streaks of lightning. Presently you pass through an ornate entrance to the ground floor of a huge old wrinkled building, peeling off for its final plunge into oblivion. It is the historic Hotel St. Louis, erected In 1836. Don Pedro, emperor of Brazil, and afterward his grandson, were its guests. Here banqueted statesmen, princes and famous men, and here, before the changing of the tides, were sittings of legislative bodies, says the Kansas City Star. As you stand in the listening silence, in the dampness of mold and decay, you unconsciously visualize the life of a long-gone yesterday. Now suddenly you start, disturbed by an impression of sound down a long, dark, dusty passageway. It is only the rain seeping in, drip, drip, every spatter echoiflfe hollowly in the emptiness. Again you drift back to your dreams, and again your nerves twang, this time at the scuttle of a rat in the broken wainscoting behind an old slave block, showing the crumbling, though quite distinguishable, name of a famous auctioneer of ante-bellum days. Beyond the block and the mart about it your searching eyes find a wide expanse of earth and cement floor bordered by rows of cells almost wholly stripped of bars, where slaves were held before their appearance npon the block to be sold to the highest bidder. With a swift intake of breath you reach the rusty gratings and peer into the dusky interior. You catch a whiff of chill, earthy air and the plaintive slight turn of your imagination to people the prison with soft-eyed patient slaves awaiting orders with the stolidity and obedience that was part of their nature. You see the old and the young, the strong and the weak, and all the various types, from a

coarse Herculean African to a slender, clear-eyed octoroon. The octoroon holds your attention. She Is young and strong and will sell for several thousand dollars. In a moment she stands on the block and the voice of the auctioneer leaps out like a whip lash: “Gentlemen, this Is a likely wench. What am I bid for her?” There follows a rapid, sing-song recital of the girl’s salable points, ending with scarcely a noticeable break in the crisp, persuasive challenge: “What am I bid?” Bidding for the Slaves. A prosperous looking planter strides forward and touches her arms appraisingly, then his hand falls unabashed to her strong bare ankles. He steps back obviously pleased, calling out with assumed Indifference: “One thousand dollars!" Higher the bids go, higher and higffer; voices rise and fall, rise and soar and swell, until at last the hammer falls, the babble subsides and the octoroon steps down to her new master. As by no volition of your own, your mind slips back to the cells and to a buxom, kind-faced mammy, created and endowed to nurse the offspring of white mothers. She will bring but a jmodest price in the mart, for there are many of her kind. Here is a young quadroon, there a gray old Creole darky, somewhere else a very black and strapping half-grown negress. You sense their speaking voices, deep and melodious, a Jargon of French and Spanish inlaid with many little English words. Suddenly, in the cells occupied by the men, the coarser blacks break out in a burst of wild, weird song, cut through by the tamtam of a drum made of a gourd covered with sheepskin. A tail and sinewy negro rises and steps out quickly to the center of the floor and dances with rolling eyes and gaping mouth to the time of the primitive drum. - Nov, a bat fiuttere out of the shadows and brushes your /ace, while yon stir out of cramping muaclas with a muttered word of relief. Drip, drip, drip, the rain seeps in, steadily, now, like a dock ticking. You mount a flight of broad and creaking walnut stairs and pause at the first landing to view a pink and

lilac tracery on the wall which once represented a painting of De Soto’s first view of the Mississippi. Led by the Chatelaine. You glance at two holes high up tn the outer wall which show the light like a pair of prying eyes under shaggy brows, then you take a bracing breath and go on. *But you halt abruptly at the sound of an opening door and the echo of slow and dragging feet coming nearer and nearer. In a moment a woman short and heavy of build, with the mingled air of graciousness and reserve, is before you. She is the chatelaine. You know it before she says "Entrez!” in her charming throaty French. She has oh a skirt of faded crimson and blue, with a basquelike bodice of luminous green. She wears a cap of soiled D’Alencon lace, and a fine odd brooch of jet as sparkling black as her deepset eyes. Instinctively you drop a silver piece into the bag which dangles with a bunch of keys from her ample waist, and follow her shuffling lead. To the accompaniment of her explanatory and also rapid French, you are. shown salons with cracked and sunken marble fireplaces, salons with vanished onyx floors, once pressed by the satin-clad feet of many beautiful women, mildewed mirrors made In the days of the first empire, crystal chandeliers with broken pear-shaped prisms, and walls from which priceless frescoes aCtd friezes and medalliortb have been removed, bits of bronze from an old balustrade, the battered fragments of a fountain. When you have looked into countless chambers and heard the history of each, you come upon a half-open door which reveals a scene of homely comfort. Here lives the chatelaine, alone, save for A white cockatoo, a fffirffry ar ' A a. tnrtnise shell cat. There’s one old mended antique chair upholstered in gay colored chintz, a spindle-legged table rich with carving and black with age, a shelf set with a row of clean blue dishes and shining pots and pdns. A kettle singing over the fire gives out the appetizing smell

of a shrimp pot-pourri. On the broad window ledge is a box of kitchen bouquet; basil, ebeval. coriander, and on the odd little balcony jutting out from it a sweet box garden of petunias, cypress vines and myrtle. Above It a freighted clothesline flaps in the wind and rain. Here you say “B’soir," and insist that you can find your way without further guidance. You retrace your steps, halting now and then to be certain of your direction, and come at last to view the ruin of a fine old tapestry. On you go to the great ground floor and linger a moment for one last look at the slave mart. Then your feet find the quiet street and a cool, mist-driven wind smites your face refreshingly. You swing back easily to the present and everyday realities, but the old Hotel St. Louis is graven upon your heart. It will slip into your thoughts again and again no matter where yon may be. At the theater perhaps, at the dance, In the busy, noisy rounds of life rather than in the silences, you will remember, you will re-see it, re-live it. And you will hear the sound of rain seeping in—drip, drip, drip—the plaintive chirp of a cricket and the scatter of a rat in the broken wainscoting,

THE HOTEL ST LOUIS