Violets and Other Tales

								

hurting much, I can go."
So yielding to his whim, they carried him further away, down the sides
of the track up to an embankment or levee by the sides of the Marigny
canal. Then Titee's brother, suddenly stopping, exclaimed:
"Why, here's a cave, a regular Robinson Cruso affair."
"It's my old man's cave," cried Titee; "oh, please go in, maybe he's
dead."
There can't be much ceremony in entering a cave, there is but one thing
to do, walk in. This they did, and holding high the lantern, beheld a
strange sight. On a bed of straw and paper in one corner lay a withered,
wizened, white-bearded old man, with wide eyes staring at the
unaccustomed sight. In the corner lay a cow.
"It's my old man!" cried Titee, joyfully. "Oh, please, grandpa, I
couldn't get here to-day, it rained all morning, and when I ran away
this evening, I slipped down and broke something, and oh, grandpa, I'm
so tired and hurty, and I'm so afraid you're hungry."
So the secret of Titee's jaunts out the railroad was out. In one of his
trips around the swamp-land, he had discovered the old man dying from
cold and hunger in the fields. Together they had found this cave, and
Titee had gathered the straw and brush that scattered itself over the
ground and made the bed. A poor old cow turned adrift by an ungrateful
master, had crept in and shared the damp dwelling. And thither Titee had
trudged twice a day, carrying his luncheon in the morning, and his
dinner in the evening, the sole support of a half-dead cripple.
"There's a crown in Heaven for that child," said the officer to whom the
case was referred.
And so there was, for we scattered winter roses on his little grave down
in old St. Rocque's cemetery. The cold and rain, and the broken leg had
told their tale.

ANARCHY ALLEY.

To the casual observer, the quaint, narrow, little alley that lies in
the heart of the city is no more than any other of the numerous
divisions of streets in which New Orleans delights. But to the idle
wanderer, or he whose mission down its four squares of much trodden
stones, is an aimless one,--whose eyes unforced to bend to the ground in
thought of sordid ways and means, can peer at will into its quaint
corners. Exchange Alley presents all the phases of a Latinized portion
of America, a bit of Europe, perhaps, the restless, chafing, anarchistic
Europe of to-day, in the midst of the quieter democratic institution of
our republic.
It is Bohemia, pure and simple, Bohemia, in all its stages, from the
beer saloon and the cheap book-store, to the cheaper cook shop and
uncertain lodging house. There the great American institution, the
wondrous monarch whom the country supports--the tramp--basks in superior
comfort and contented, unmolested indolence. Idleness and labor, poverty
and opulence, the honest, law-abiding workingman, and the reckless,
restless anarchist, jostle side by side, and brush each other's elbows
in terms of equality as they do nowhere else.