The contrast between the spirit of the city and the city's architecture is like the contrast between waking and sleep.
Apparently there is a 'boom' in everything but that one dead feature.
The water in the gutters used to be stagnant and slimy, and a potent disease-breeder; but the gutters are flushed now, two or three times a day, by powerful machinery; in many of the gutters the water never stands still, but has a steady current.

Other sanitary improvements have been made; and with such effect that New Orleans claims to be (during the long intervals between the occasional yellow-fever assaults) one of the healthiest cities in the Union.

There's plenty of ice now for everybody, manufactured in the town.

It is a driving place commercially, and has a great river, ocean, and railway business.

At the date of our visit, it was the best lighted city in the Union, electrically speaking.
The New Orleans electric lights were more numerous than those of New York, and very much better.