Page:Maud Howe - Atlanta in the South.djvu/80



Carnival was at hand, and the city was tingling with curiosity and expectation of the pranks the revellers were preparing to perpetrate. Practical jokes of the most complex nature were brewing in the minds of men whose age and occupation might in other parts of the world have precluded the possibility of their taking part in such frivolous amusement. Canal Street was crowded with shoppers, flaneurs, and loafers of all degrees, from the gentlemen congregated about the steps of the Club-house to the knot of unaccountables at the street corner. Nowhere in the world does the verb "to loaf" exist in so many tenses as in New Orleans; not dreamy Venice, nor sunny Naples itself, can excel the Crescent City in the number of its loafers or the quality of its loafing. It is an art, indeed, to loaf well and elegantly, so that the action is without irritating effect upon work-driven unfortunates, or repellantly suggestive of the waste of time to those who by nature resemble that tiresome, overrated insect, the busy bee.