CHAPTER III.
New Orleans is pre-eminent among the cities of the New World for more than one reason. Certain characteristics more European than American are here found, and the mingling of the ceremonious politeness of the French people with the just and liberal spirit of the American has brought about a code of manners superior to that either of France or of our purely American cities. Deference to women still obtains, and the chivalrous attitude of men toward them has not diminished, as in so many parts of our country it has done, in proportion as laws, social and municipal, leave less room for oppression of what is so often called the "weaker sex." Is the phrase a satire, and to-day is the balance of power in the hands of men, or women?
For quaint houses no city in the United States—nay, I had almost said in the world,—can rival New Orleans. The dear queer, rickety little one-story tenements, with rude red terra-cotta tiles and wide eaves leaning over to the edge of the narrow banquette (a "side-walk" is an un-
