SUMMER IN NEW ORLEANS 131 



Lelia ! thou art as a rose unto me : 

 Think on the nightingale singing for thee ! 

 For he who on love like thine reposes 

 Least heeds how speeds the time of the roses. 



JAMES CLAEENCE MANGAN. 



EARLY SUMMER IN NEW ORLEANS 1 

 (From "Dr. Serier") 



IT was very beautiful to see the summer set in. 

 Trees everywhere. You looked down a street, and, 

 unless it were one of the two broad avenues where 

 the only street-cars ran, it was pretty sure to be so 

 overarched with boughs that, down in the distance, 

 there was left but a narrow streak of vivid blue 

 sky in the middle. Well-nigh every house had its 

 garden, as every garden its countless flowers. The 

 dark orange began to show its growing weight of 

 fruitfulness, and was hiding in its thorny interior 

 the nestlings of yonder mocking-bird, silently forag- 

 ing down in the sunny grass. The yielding branches 

 of the privet were boughed down with their plumy 

 panicles, and swayed heavily from side to side, 

 drunk with gladness and plenty. Here the peach 

 was beginning to droop over a wall. There, and 

 yonder again, beyond, ranks of fig-trees, that had 

 so muffled themselves in their foliage that not the 

 nakedness of a twig showed through, had yet more 

 figs than leaves. The crisp, cool masses of the 



1 From Dr. Seiner; copyright, 1883, 1884, by George W. 

 Cable ; published by Charles Scribner's Sons. 



