p. 176 | Sunday in New Orleans

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 25, 1869

Sunday in New Orleans.

It would be a wise precaution for the stranger from any quiet rural district, or any staid moral locality near, or remote, to procure an almanac previous to his visiting New Orleans, particularly if he is a church goer. Without one he might be puzzled to know one day from another. He might hear a distant bell ring out something that at home would be a call for prayer, and startled at the hint it would convey, he would look anxiously around for other proofs; but there are none. There goes cart after cart, full of wooden blocks to make railroads on the “Nicholson” plan, the driver in his under shirt dark with perspiration and toil stains, as weary looking as the mule he drives, gives the stranger full assurance that it is not Sunday. Still that bell peals its solemn, measured tone, in his ears, and seeing crowds of illy dressed and well dressed men enter a large building where the black glazed flapping-doors fall noiselessly together as they pass in, he says to himself, “Ah, this must be the house of God, where the rich and the poor meet together and the Lord is the maker of them all.” He passes in reverently with hand raised ready to uncover his head—his eyes see blue wreaths of incense curling above the heads of those from whose mouths come oaths, and slang, and villainous tobacco smoke, but no prayers! and his ears drink in the sounds of a gambling hell! He rushes out, and sees at every dozen paces the same black, noiseless swinging doors, the same motley visitors passing in and out; he hears the blacksmith’s hammer ring on the anvil; the shoemaker’s shop is open, and his hammer returns a dull echo to the ringing tones of the iron shoemaker; the tailor has his charcoal furnace out on the sidewalk, with “many irons in the fire;” the lottery shops are crowded, the theaters are selling their tickets, hand bills tell of the Fair and the races, the rat killing, the sparring and the wrestling matches; and horror of horrors! he sees the date; Sunday, April 11, and he asks, Are they Christians? Why, of course they are: but what does that signify? Just see that procession moving this way with music, and banners, benevolent societies, schools, orphan asylums and an endless train of men, public, private—of some religion, any religion, every religion, New Orleans religion, the world’s religion—seeming. And see, there goes the best part of it—the little boys, the little girls, the women—with truth enough to redeem the rest. God bless the boys, the little girls, and the women.

The papers of the city say that from twenty to twenty-five thousand people turned out in honor of the Pope’s Ordination: more than that I cannot say, as I am not an anniversarian to any great extent for anybody.—Correspondence of Battle Creek Journal.