She had never felt it so
strongly before. It must be, she thought, the tonic of the air, which made
her conscious of youth and life, eager to have things happen, and be in
the midst of them. But Kate was a comfort, almost a friend. And Timmy the
cat was a priceless treasure.
No town in America, perhaps, could have contrasted more sharply with New
York than New Orleans. Angela felt this, even as the ship moved slowly
along the great canal and slipped into the dark, turbid gold of the
Mississippi River. The drowsy landscape on either side was Southern
landscape, and among live-oaks draped with mourning flags of moss, and
magnolia-trees gemmed with buds, there were planters' houses which seemed
all roof and balcony. Buzzards flew up suddenly, out of rice-fields, as
the ship rounded a curve--creatures big and long-legged as the storks of
Holland and Algeria. The wharf, when the ship docked at last, was filled
with bales of cotton, and it was as if all the negroes in America must
have come down to meet the boat. She might have been walking into an old
story of Cable's, in the days "befoh the wah."
Her idea had been to travel on to the West next day, but New Orleans held
her. She had left the Old World eagerly for the New; but this bit of the
Old, in the midst of the New, made her feel as if she had stumbled into an
ancient Spanish court, in the middle of a modern skyscraper.
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