The daily crescent. [volume] ([New Orleans, La.]) 1848-1851, 1848-09-19
rFrom the Sun of Temperance.


A week ago wall of despair resounded through
the City Of the Crescent. CONSERVATION was de-
piced on every countenance Men met each other
with sad and mournful gaze. They did not speak
the ordinary salutations omitted in their deep
and burning grief Lovely girls started from their
homeseads with their usual tripping, buoyant STEP
but they did not proceed far before their pace be-
came slow and measured, and their merry looks
were converted into sOmbre hue. Little boys HE'D
to the pavement and extricated their globular
marbles from the recesses OF their ample pockets
but thew paused ere they sped them from their
adroit fingers and wept until you would think their
very hearts would break. Old women appeared at
their easements with mOstened 'kerchlets at their
eyes. The bright sun seemed shrouded in gloom.
Anguish broOded over our fair metropolis.
| asked a sorrow-strcken old man the cause OF
such unusual woe. His heart seemed too full for
utterance. He turned from me, yet not before
saw the big, unmanly tear-drop course down his
furrowed cheek. A youth was passing along, with
dropping head and haggard mein, and responding
tread ''Tell me'' | inquired with beseeching
tone, as caught him by the arm, tell me why an
entire city floats in agony" wild, anguish
freighted shrek burst from his lips, and he passed
on without a response.
A doleful maiden stood on the Threshold Of her
paternal mansion, and she was wringing her tender
hands, while her blue eye was turned, in mute sup
plcation, heavenward. Daughter of beauty and
affection" said, there Is torture in thy heart, and
it pervades the town. By thy radiant charms
implOre thee to unravel my suspense" With hol-
low, maniac laugh, she bounded from my sight.
A sobbing boy stood at the street corner. Alb,
little one, there must be sad frightful dole, when
distress, so deep and dire, pOughs thy tender SOUL
6 Sweet, though rifted bud - quered, IN accents
of soft entreaty wherefore that wailing cry, and
those groans that surge from the care Of thy young
hearth" He essayed to speak, but the burning
agony choked his utterance, and passed on unan~
swered and bewildered
A blind old man, with his faithful dog by his
side sat upon the steps Of decaying house. He
was muttering, as~1 drew nigh, something that
seemed to be prayer. His hands were stretched
towards the angel abode, and his sightless eye-baH
were turned in the same direction. The shaggy
old dog mournfulIy howled in sympathy with his
masters grief.
1t was sad fearful sight, the old man, the old
dog and the wierd-lOoking cid tenement.
Speak to me, poor visionless, agonlZed, old
man Why that lorn dispairing look, and that
murmured prayer! Has Heaven forsaken this
proud and populous city of the South Has the
sullen and stained current that washes its feet,
leaped over the barriers TO inundate and destroy
or the foreign foe in your midst, clamorng Tor the
blood of the male, and the warm signs and volup-
tuous proportions of your brown-eyed daughters :
Or perhaps the safFron-hued plague has crept to-
your hearth-stones, and the remorseless reaper il
gOrgng his funny children, the toothless WORMS
with dainty human flesh or it may be that hollow
checked famine is parching and alternating your"
self and fellow deniZens.
But tile old man continued his indstinct snppli-
cations, and the old, shaggy dog, his melancholy
howl, and left them to their cornfortIess misery
An ebon-hued offspring of Ethiopia was weaving
an eccentric dance upon the unyielding pavement
to the sonorous notes Of his husky voice. gladly
approached him. for his face was wreathed IN
smiles, and knew that he would reveal TO me the
occasion of the pervading gloom.
"Bronzed and discolored emigrant from the hot
land of Cleopatra began, large heeled vassaL
to some dsconsolate, brooding white man, tell
me, if YOU can, why this dense city is pregnant
with moaning and signs, and grief, and tears and
PRAYERS and agony say, too, wherefore your merry
SALVATION and jovial strain amidst the general tor
ture and dispair :"
His response was brief, but disclosing: why,
ook-ah-here, Massa, ice am gin out. Niggars
neber gets no ice, no how. White folks cry, nigga,
he lofs hissef to straction that am Ceolated fac.