Yonder the wind-split,
fathom-long leaves of the banana, brightening the background, arched
upward, drooped again and faintly oscillated to the air's caress. Here
bloomed and smelled the delicate magnolia fuscata, and here, redder with
flowers than green with shining leaves, shone the camellia. Here spread
the dark oleander, the pittosporum and the Chinese privet; and here were
the camphor-tree and the slender sweet olive--we have named them all
before and our steps should not take us over the same ground twice in
one circuit; that would be bad gardening. But there they were, under
those ordinarily so intolerant trees, prospering and singing praises
with them, some in full blossom and perfume, some waiting their turn,
like parts of a choir. In the midst of all, where a broad path eddied
quite round an irregular open space, and that tender quaintness of decay
appeared which is the unfailing New Orleans touch, the space was filled
with roses. This spot was lovely enough by day and not less so for being
a haunt of toddling babes and their nurses; but at night--! Regularly at
evening there comes into the New Orleans air, from Heaven knows whither,
not a mist, not a fog nor a dampness, but a soft, transparent, poetical
dimness that in no wise shortens the range of vision--a counterpart of
that condition which so many thousands of favored travellers in other
longitudes know as the "Atlantic haze.
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