380 LIPJB ON THE MISSISSIPPI.

To the city, it will be worth many times its cost, for it will breed
its species. What has been lacking hitherto, was a model to build
toward; something to educate eye and taste; a suggester, so to

The city is well outfitted with progressive men—thinking, saga-
cious, long-headed men. The contrast between the spirit of the city
and the city's architecture is like the contrast between waking and
sleep. Apparently there is a f boom' in everything but that one
dead feature. The water in the gutters used to be stagnant and
slimy, and a potent disease-breeder; but the gutters are flushed now,
two or three times a day, by powerful machinery; in many of the
gutters the water never stands still, but has a steady current. Other
sanitary improvements have been made; and with such effect that
New Orleans claims to be (during the long intervals between the
occasional yellow-fever assaults) one of the healthiest cities in the
Union. There's plenty of ice now for everybody, manufactured in
the town. It is a driving place commercially, and has a great river,
ocean, and railway business. At the date of our visit, it was the best
lighted city in the Union, electrically speaking. The New Orleans
electric lights were more numerous than those of New York, and
very much better. One had this modified noonday not only in Canal
and some neighbouring chief streets, but all along a stretch of five
miles of river frontage. There are good clubs in the city now—
several of them but recently organised—and inviting modern-style
pleasure resorts at "West End and Spanish Fort. The telephone is
everywhere. One of the most notable advances is in journalism.
The newspapers, as I remember them, were not a striking feature.
Now they are. Monoy is spent upon them with a free hand. They
get the news, let it cost what it may. The editorial work is not
hack-grinding, but literature. As an example of New Orleans jour-
nalistic achievement, it maybe mentioned that the * Times-Democrat*
of August 26, 1882, contained a report of the year's business of the
towns of the Mississippi Valley, from New Orleans all the way to
St. !B&al—two thousand miles. That issue of the paper consisted of
forty pages; seven columns to the page; two hundred and eighty
columns in all; fifteen hundred words to the column; an aggregate
of four hundred and twenty thousand words. That is to say, not