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