396

LIFE ON T£TJE MISSISSIPPI.

With Mr. Cable along to see for you, and describe and explain
and illuminate^ a jog through .that old quarter is a vivid pleasure.
And you have a vivid sense as of unseen or dimly seen things—vivid,
and yet fitful and darkling; you glimpse salient features, but lose the
fine shades or catch them imperfectly through the vision of the

THE ST. CHARLES HOTEL.

imagination: a case, as it were, of ignorant near-sighted stranger
traversing -the rim of wide vague horizons of Alps with an inspired
aaad enlightened long-sighted native.
We visited the old St. Ix>nis Hotel, now occupied by municipal