The virtues and the vices, the loves and the hates of life were strangely blended in the character of John Randolph Grymes; but if we judge from the fact that he had and left many warm and devoted friends, and few enemies, we must suppose the good in his nature greatly preponderated.  But notwithstanding the great space he had filled in the eyes of the people of the city, his death startled only for a moment, and straightway he was forgotten; as the falling pebble dimples for a moment the lake’s quiet surface—­then all is smooth again.

CHAPTER XXX.

DIVISION OF NEW ORLEANS INTO MUNICIPALITIES.

AMERICAN HOTEL—­INTRODUCTION OF STEAMBOATS—­FAUBOURG ST. MARY—­CANAL STREET—­ST. CHARLES HOTEL—­SAMUEL J. PETERS—­JAMES H. CALDWELL—­ FATHERS OF THE MUNICIPALITY—­BERNARD MARIGNY—­AN ASS—­A.B.  ROMAN.

Forty years ago there was not a public hotel in the city of New Orleans which received and entertained ladies.  There was but one respectable American hotel in the city.  This was kept by John Richardson, who still lives, and was on Conti Street, between Chartres and the levee.  About that time Madame Heries opened the Planter’s Hotel on Canal Street, which some years after fell and crushed to death some thirty persons.  There were many boarding-houses, where ladies were entertained, and to these were all ladies visiting the city constrained to resort.  Some of these were well kept and comfortable, but afforded none or very few of the advantages of public hotels.  They were generally kept by decayed females who were constrained to this vocation by pecuniary misfortunes.  The liberal accommodation afforded in hotels, especially built and furnished for the purpose, was not to be found in any of them.

At this period all the means of travel between Mobile and New Orleans, across the Lake, consisted of one or two schooners, as regular weekly packets, plying between the two cities.  It was about this time that the tide of emigration which had peopled the West, and the rapid increase of production, was stimulating the commerce of New Orleans.  It was obeying the impulse, and increasing in equal ratio its population.  This commerce was chiefly conducted by Americans, and most of these were of recent establishment in the city.  That portion of the city above Canal Street, and then known as the Faubourg St. Mary, was little better than a marsh in its greater portion.  Along the river and Canal Street, there was something of a city appearance, in the improvements and business, where there were buildings.  In every other part there were shanties, and these were filled with a most miserable population.

About this time, too, steamboats were accumulating upon the Western waters—­a new necessity induced by the increase of travel and commerce—­affording facilities to the growing population and increasing production of the vast regions developing under the energy of enterprise upon the Mississippi and her numerous great tributaries.  It seemed that at this juncture the whole world was moved by a new impulse.  The difficulties of navigating the Mississippi River had been overcome, and the consequences of this new triumph of science and man’s ingenuity were beginning to assume a more vigorous growth.