House and Garden 
A BANANA SCREEN 
of the old families. The house is the large 
conventional home of the early nine¬ 
teenth century, with a wide hall running 
through its centre. 1 he front gallery, 
porch, verandah (the name is different 
in different places, but the thing named 
changes not), runs around the entire 
house, both upstairs and down, but 
the floor of the lower one is tiled. The 
great square brick columns rising from 
it, are interrupted by the upper flooring, 
but take there another rise, and stop 
only at the pointed roof with its dormer 
windows. A high wooden, and ugly, 
fence screens the garden from the 
“banquette,” as the sidewalk is 
called in New Orleans, and the passer¬ 
by, like the photographer, sees little 
more than the trees. But such trees. 
Are they not the distinguishing feature 
here ? See that great oak at the corner 
outside, in full leaf; and inside, the 
crape myrtle, so feathery in stem and 
leaf, that the orange trees and magnolias, 
just back of them, are like the shading 
of an artist. But we feel it was the tree- 
lover, not the artist, who planted those 
trees. Close at the right and left hand 
of the house, are the locally celebrated 
red and white japonica trees. What 
a mass of color, when they are in bloom; 
charming us by the beautiful perfection of 
their form, but tantalizing us by their lack 
of perfume. So far in the background that 
the picture cannot even hint at their presence, 
are the oleanders, with their spicy flowers of 
pink, white and red, and here, lazily, at the 
very door, creeps the beautiful little Bayou 
St. John on its way to Lake Pontchartrain. 
Would that a picture could give the beauties 
of its banks, when the dewberry and black¬ 
berry aie in bloom; when the low places are 
filled with iris, and the willows drop their 
longest branches into its lazy current! 
One feels it but a step from this Acadian 
scene to the old house in Ascension (for 
Acadia does indeed he close to Ascension 
Parish). This is the typical “big house,” 
from which the negro slaves grew to look for 
all things, good and bad. A Colonial Span¬ 
ish house, not of true Spanish architecture, 
for modifications had to be made to suit 
material and climate; and perhaps, in this and 
others, the plan was unintentionally altered 
COURTYARD OF THE ARCHBISHOP’S PALACE 
26l 
