An old lady who knew Louisiana in the forties and fifties, has left record of the fact that plantation negroes used to know and sing the French operatic airs, just as the Italian peasants of to-day know and sing the music of Puccini and Leoncavallo.  But if opera no longer reaches the negro, it cannot be said that it has failed to leave its stamp on the French quarter.  From open windows and doors, from little shops and half-hidden courtyards, from shuttered second story galleries, there comes floating to the ears of the wayfarer the sound of music.  In one house a piano is being played with dash; in another a child is practising her scales; from still another comes a soprano voice, the sad whistling of a flute, the tinkle of a guitar, or the anguished squeal of a tortured violin.  Never except in Naples have I heard, on one block, so many musical instruments independently at work, as in some single blocks of the vieux carre; and never anywhere have I seen a sign which struck as more expressive of the industries of a locality, than that one which I saw near the house of Mme. Lalurie, which read:  “Odd Jobs Done, and Music.”

The reason for this musical congestion is twofold.  Not only is the Creole a great lover of good light music, but the whole region for blocks about the Opera House is populated by old musicians from the opera’s orchestra, and women, some middle aged, some old, who used to be in the ballet or the chorus, and who not only keep alive the musical tradition of the district, but pass it on to the younger generation.  Indeed there are almost as many places in the French quarter where music may be heard, as where stories are told.

In one street may be seen a house where the troubles with the Mafia began.  On a corner—­the southeast corner of Royal and St. Peter—­is shown the house in which Cable’s “’Sieur George” resided.  This house is, I believe, the same one which, when erected, caused people to move away from its immediate neighborhood, for fear that its height would cause it to fall down.  It is a four story house—­the first built in the city.  At the southeast corner of Royal and Hospital Streets stands that “haunted” house of Mme. Lalaurie, who fled the town when indignation was aroused because of devilish tortures she inflicted on her slaves.  This house is now an Italian tenement, but even in its decay it will be recognized as a mansion which, in its day, was fit to house such guests as Louis Philippe, Lafayette, and Ney.  A guest even more distinguished than these, was to have been housed in the mansion at the northeast corner of St. Louis and Chartres Streets, for the Creoles had a plan to rescue Napoleon from St. Helena and bring him here, and had this house prepared to receive him.