AT LARGE

Evening Star, Issue 19841, 14 April 1928, Page 2

AT LARGE

CHIEFLY ABOUT NEW ORLEANS On August 27 I bade a final farewell to Ireland, sailing from Queenstown to Montreal. The Atlantic was kind to us, and we arrived at this latter port on September 14. Here a relative met us and motored us to his home in Peterboro, a distance of upwards of 400 miles. It was the longest motor journey I had ever experienced. But it was pleasant in many ways. It gave us a' fine opportunity to see the country, and enabled us to stop when and where we chose. We spent the night at Kingston, where Principal Grant used to preside over the fortunes of the fine university there, and whose visit once to Dunedin many Dimed inites will recall with pleasure. The country all along our ,routo was interesting, in many places beautiful; and the number of motor cars Hying back and forth along the magnificent road was amazing. Still, I was not sorry when the journey ended, and out of the turmoil of trains, steamers, and hotels we found ourselves at last in the comfort and privacy of a charming home.. Wo spent some two months here, and found the summer of which wc had been defrauded in Britain. We did more. The loveliness of the “ fall ” was combined with it, so that wo saw the midsummer pomps passing out in a blaze of glory amid the flames which autumn was kindling. The “ fall ” in Canada is a sight which no visitor can ever forget. Canada is a country of wonderful possibilities, but, like most others, it has problems that will tax the brains of its wisest. It is facing the beginning now of one that America is at its wits’ end to solve—immigration. The Anglican General Synod was in session in Winnipeg when I was in Canada, and a number of its members made very serious charges against the Immigration policy of the King Government. It is quite clear that a large percentage of the immigrants arriving in the country are non-British. It would appear that from to 80 per cent, are from .Southern Europe. A speaker said that in his district of a thousand families that had been added to it in the previous year only twelve were British born. It was roundly asserted that if the present policy is continued in a very short time the British will have lost supremacy in the whole of Western Canada. It was also indicated by several speakers that the Roman Catholic Church was behind the immigration policy. It was out to capture Canada for the church. It was charged that the Department of immigration and Colonisation employed twenty-five Roman Catholic priests as immigration agents compared with one from the Church of England and one from the United Church of Canada, ft is in every way probable that the policy of the Roman Catholic Church is to win the country to its faith. And why not? Any church that believes in itself is bound to try to propagate itself—to be, in fact, a missionary church. It seems to me that Protestants, instead of whining over the activity of the Roman Catholic Church, should assume it as a fact and wheel its own forces into action. Protesttantism is within its rights in asking from Government a fair field and no favor. But it is a forlorn policy to try to cover up one’s own lethargy by a splenetic spray of accusations against the superior resource and activity of one’s opponent-.

About the middle of November Canada began to get a nip in the air that soon became too keen for my taste. So we packed our traps and set our faces southward. Our ultimate destination for another halt was Houston, in Texas. We made our way thither from Toronto via Chicago and New Orleans. In Chicago we spent a pleasant day with Dr Ernest Guthrie, a Dunedin boy who has made good in America. Ho came to Chicago from Boston, where he was formerly minister of an important Congie gational Church. He is now director of a huge fund of several million dollars left to the Congregational Church by the proprietor of the Chicago ‘ Daily News.’ It is a most important and influential position and an impressive testimony to the abilities of Dr Guthrie that he should been selected for the post. Ihe Chicago of forty years ago, in which J spent a week, has well now disappeared, and a new, vast city has taken its place. It is a city of contrasts, of beauty and ugliness, of vice and virtue, of hell and heaven. When I went up to San Francisco with Captain Edio in the Mararoa, then the blue ribbon boat of the IJ.S.S. Company, making her first trip to 'Frisco, "he told me a story to illustrate the irreligion of Chicago. One of its citizens had died and gone np aloft. He met St. Peter at the gate. The latter asked him his intentions. He said he wanted to go in there. St. Peter asked him who he was and where he came from. Ho told him his name, and said ho came from Chicago. “ Chicago 1” says St. Peter. “ Where’s that?” “What!” replied the man. “Do you not know where Chicago is! Why, my dear sir, it is the biggest town in the United States!” “Well, I’ll get the map and see if we can find it,” responded the gatekeeper. It was found, and after some further parley St. Peter said; “Well, I’ll let vou in, but you are the first man who has ever come here from Chicago.” I don’t know what its standing is today in that other world, but I still think, as I did on my first visit to that city, of which big Bill Thompson, the present mayor, is a typical representative, that anyone who manages to get into heaven out of it deserves the reward. Yet it is in many ways a noble and beautiful city, and it is a pity that its hellish side gets such a disproportionate space in the newspapers.

I mad© only a brief stay in Chicago, for I was anxious to spend any snare time I had in New Orleans. I f ad never been there before, and it possessed a variety of lures for On© was the memories of two comrades of my youthful days, one of whom died there under tragic circumstances, and the other mad© his fortune. The latter was manager of a drapery shop m the little town in the North of Ireland, where I served my time to the trade. Some time after I left to go to college the firm came to an end. The owner of it and his manager both went to America, finding their way ultimately one to Houston, in Texas, the other to New Orleans. They found work, eacn beginning at the lowest steps of the

ladder. For a while it was a hard struggle. The country was just beginning to get on its feet after the ripping up of the Civil War. Eventually they both made good. The former owner of the little (comparatively> drapery shop in the small North of Ireland town died two or three years ago, having* built up an immense furnishing business that has now a turnover of upwards of 250,000d0l a year. His former assistant gradually established one of those Kuge chain stores that operate all over the States. The lure of his old Irish home was too great to permit of him ending his days in the city where ho made his fortune. He went back to Ireland, erected a fine mansion beside the little one-horse village where he had played as a,boy, and died there a few years ago. Life is funny—if you take it that way.

But the city has other lures—historical, climatical, social, artistic. Three nationalities have at various times possessed it, and each has left its impress upon it. Founded by the French 210 years ago, .it became the capital of their possessions in America. Later in 1762 it was transferred to Spain, In 1900 it reverted again to France, and three years later it was purchased by the United States, and became part of the territory of the great llepublic. At that time it hud a population of some 10,000. To-day it has grown to 400,000, with an area of some 200 square miles. It has a harbor of from 05ft to 200 ft in depth, thirty miles of wharves, and is the commercial outlet for the whole Mississippi Valley. Its population was terrified lest the levees might give way, and it should thus bo swamped in the great tragic inundation that recently turned that vast smiling district into a desert. Climatically New Orleans is the winter resort of America. When I was there, though blizzards were freezing up Chicago and the north, New Orleans was basking in sunshine, and, though it was near December, the days were warmer than our midsummer. Nor is it oppressively hot in the summer. It is kept cool by being surrounded by rivers and lakes, and by its proximity to the Gulf of Mexico. So it is the playground for outdoor pleasures of all kinds. Its mardi gras celebrations are world famous. It is a paradise for sportsmen. Nowhere else in tho world can disciples of J/.aak Walton and Nimrod find finer outlets for their skill. Big game, bears, panthers, deer, opossums, raccoons, etc., abound. In the winter time the hundreds of bavs, bayous, lagoons, lakes, swamps, are full of winged game, both native and migratory. Mould not this list make the teeth of tho New Zealand gun devotee water“ Wild turkey, quail, doves, snipe, plover, papabote, geese, mallard, teal, spoonbill, pintail, canvas back, red head, ringed neck, and other varieties of duck abound in great numbers.” Great flocks of migratory birds come down from the north to winter here. And included in such migrations are men and women. What the Riviera is to tho inhabitants of Northern Europe New Orleans is to the wintry denizens of North America.

The social and literary attractions are on a scale similar to that of climate and sport. Here the medieval and the modern civilisations meet and shake hands. In the French and Spanish quarters of the town one is back in the middle ages. The buildings remind you of that. .The narrow streets, the houses with their overhanging balconies, tall shuttered windows with their orange bright awnings, arched gateways leading through flagstone patios into flowering courtyards scenes described so vividly by, among others, Lafcadio Hearn, who lived in one of these courtyards for a time. The shops are filled with antiques of every sort. Coffee rooms and restaurants invite the epicure, for the cooks here, with their traditions of France and Spain, blended with the Creole art, have made the city famous. There is one thing they do not seem to have acquired either here or anywhere else in America —the art ot making ten. Nowhere in the whole country could you get a cup of decent tea such ns one is accustomed to in Dunedin. When one tires of tbe shops, lie can go and rest in tbe parks and gardens. There are 900 acres of these. It is a strange sensation to. stand in one of the many squares—Beauregard—and think of the change. This was once the old slave market, where human beings were bought and sold like hogs and dogs. It was his witnessing one of these sales when he visited New Orleans that led Lincoln. to say that if he ever got a chance ho would hit that thing hard.” He got the chance, and we know how he kept his word. The children of those whose parents were once sold hero like houses and horses arc taking an honorable place in the social and civic life ol: the city, forming 30 per cent, of the whole population.

One can’t think’of New Orleans without a reference to the Creoles, made famous by Geo, Cable and otbei writers. There is some misapprehension as to their origin. Many suppose they are the offspring of a negro mother and a white father. Ibis is not so, Cable says the word has always implied a certain excellence of origin and use of the 1 rench language.” It is now recognised that they are the native born white children of French or Spanish origin. But readers must be referred to Cable’s books for a charming picture of this interesting people who have added so much to the literary and artistic life of New Orleans, The city is a miniature picture of America itself. Within the lifetime of many of its present citizens they have seen it emerge from the liorc.scent swamps and savannahs ol the Mississippi delta to the rich and romance laden New Orleans of to-day. And for both the future is bright with promise. Rob.