Identifier: historicalsketch00hear (find matches)
Title: Historical sketch book and guide to New Orleans and environs, with map : illustrated with many original engravings, and containing exhaustive accounts of the traditions, historical legends, and remarkable localities of the Creole city
Year: 1885 (1880s)
Authors: Hearn, Lafcadio, 1850-1904 Pennell, Joseph, 1857-1926
Subjects:
Publisher: New York : W.H. Coleman
Contributing Library: University of Connecticut Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
hn Linton, first president of the Canal Bank, Glendy Burke,also a president of the same institution, Steeple Dixen, Dr. Rogers, William aarke, Jr..brother of Thomas Allen Clarke, Jacob Wilcox, the first to attempt the manufacture of artificialice in New Orleans, and many others. Not one of these members, it is sad to think, now livesto corroborate the pleasures, episodes and events enjoyed or enacted at Elkin, which we nowpropose to relate. . „ , The members of the club were all well-to-do men, professionally or commerciaUy, keepmghorses and carriage, so that every day at the close of business they were wont to drive overthe shell-road to their club, where elegant dinners waited their coming. The appointments ofthe club were complete, so far as services and attendance were concerned; while its prominentattraction was its chief, whom Elkin had secured, a Frenchman, Bertrand by name, a cordon bleuin gastronomy. Those were the days of high betting on cards and horses, the days when the
Text Appearing After Image:
1 GUIDE TO NEW ORLEANS. 93 fascinating game of brag was indulged in, to an extent almost fabulous. Several members ofthe Elkin Club were known to have lost large sums at the gaming table, thereby enriching someof the more fortunate fellows, and one in particular, to whose success at brag was ascribed thefoundation of his subsequent large fortune. Feasting and gaming were not the onlj^ pleasures and pastime at Elkin. Those were alsobibulous days ; but to the honor and credit of that period be it said, there was no whiskey drankin the club ; in truth, that beverage was then, if not unknown, at least rejected from all socialindulgencies. Madeira—and the Madeira of 1830 was famous—Madeira, sheriy, clarets and Bur-gundies, those were the wines di*ank by the Elkin Club men. A wine-drinking bout at that club,which was the subject of a bet, was in after years described by Mr. Grymes at a private dinnerparty given to the judges of the Supreme Court, which provoked considerable merriment. A

Note About Images