Chapter 6
Section 6 of Captain Billy's Whizbang, Volume 3, Number 27, November 1921. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Captain Billy's Whizbang, Volume 3, Number 27, November 1921, by W. H. Fawcett. Sporty New Orleans by Reverend Golightly, Morrill, Pastor of People's Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. If you want to take a course of study in the liberal sciences of gaiety and godlessness, go to New Orleans, the Crescent City of Climate, Creole, Carnival, Cotton, Conventions, Cane Sugar, Cafes, and Cemeteries.
Though there are more than 30 graveyards, it is not a dead town. I found weekday races and prize fights on Sunday, as well as other religious services. It has been called the Great Winter Resort of the United States, and there are enough resorts by day and night for all the good and bad who care to patronize them. Pleasure is the big word in the dictionary of New Orleans life. Her morals, as well as her markets, are French.
She is the commercial gateway to the Panama Canal. Her citizens have improved the city sewage and water supply, paved the streets, erected fine hotels and public buildings, and enlarged her port facilities. If she amends her ways as much morally,
she will be a safe place for pious as well as political and carnival celebrations. One night after I had taken in three dozen oysters and washed them down with French drip coffee, I took in a night court where people of black skin were sentenced for cracking and breaking some of the laws. A gambling hell where money was stacked up and pulled down on the turn of a card. a cafe and cabaret where the colored man was outshining his white brother elsewhere,
and then strolled through a shady district of all shades of color and character. The denizens of the vice dens started a street fight. They threw stones and shoes, which I dodged, and hurled hard vile names, which deeply impressed me. Girls, not cursed, with an incorruptible chastity, in tempting disabile, tripped along the street and ogled me. The doors of some of these places of contraband amusement were wide open to welcome the visitor, while
others were shut and bore a place card with some such reassuring information that Mabel is engaged, call later. During the war, this Broadway to Ball, Avenue to Avernus, Hell's Highway, and Promenade to Perdition was temporarily closed for moral repairs and sanitary improvements. Degradation slope was graded and a curb set up for evildoers, but far be it from me to injure the reputation of New Orleans for wantonness and frivolity. The fact that these places were
officially closed for a while need not deter those who journey here today for these simple pleasures and from easily finding them. No war order can change the leopard spots of the city. The Epicurean motto, let us eat, drink, and be merry, prevails according to time-honored custom. I attended a theater which offered a bill that would not be tolerated in any other city of the United States. Jokes and clothes were pulled off in a way to make the blaze blush. The Crescent
City is cosmopolitan and has all the races, but the most flourishing is the horse race. Betting was the main thing. The horses were fast, but the women at the track were even faster. A petite Parisian petticoat invited me to take her out here every day to bet on the races, but I thought I'd better not.
During the Mardi Gras, Waterloo's revelry by night was outdone. Streets were a riot of rogues and rampant rivalry, a mad pageant of music, masks, and merriment, a mob of men and maidens. Whatever the parade seemed to be outside, it was plain the devil's spirit was inside. If one is afflicted with naughty propensities, this is a fine place to get rid of them. I attended a ball mask.
The manager lamented the passing of the good old times when drinks were allowed to be sold
