New Orleans History -- Lake Pontchartrain
Thursday, December 12, 2024
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1899 - The Goodness of St. Rocque

'There had been a picnic the day before, and as merry a crowd of giddy, chattering Creole girls and boys as ever you could see boarded the ramshackle dummy-train that puffed its way wheezily out wide Elysian Fields Street, around the lily-covered bayous, to Milneburg-on-the-Lake. Now, a picnic at Milneburg is a thing to be remembered for ever. One charters a rickety-looking, weather-beaten dancing-pavilion, built over the water, and after storing the children--for your true Creole never leaves the small folks at home--and the baskets and mothers downstairs, the young folks go up-stairs and dance to the tune of the best band you ever heard. For what can equal the music of a violin, a guitar, a cornet, and a bass viol to trip the quadrille to at a picnic? Then one can fish in the lake and go bathing under the prim bath-houses...and go rowing on the lake in a trim boat, followed by the shrill warnings of anxious mamans.'

Source:  Project Gutenburg e-text
http://www.infocentral.com/texts/etext96/stroq10.txt