Page:Creole Sketches.djvu/206

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176
CREOLE SKETCHES

ness; but picturesqueness is not comfort: there is much of outward charm in old-fashioned places, in quaint rooms, in audacious balconies, in mediæval-looking dormers, in peaked roofs, in maisonettes tinted lemon-yellow, pale rose, or faint green; but all this does not give the coziness of a home. The New Orleans of half a century ago is not suited to the wants of the New Orleans of to-day. The population has increased; there are infinitely fewer rich people here than formerly; there are many more inhabitants to the square mile, and the great houses which formerly constituted the winter residences of wealthy planters and others must now be portioned out among many families or transformed into boarding-houses in order to be made profitable to their owners. A change in the old style of building dwellings is becoming more and more imperative every succeeding year.