The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1932, Page 20

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20

THE LUTHERAN PIONEER

spectator soon finds himself dreaming of old New
Orleans.

In this section of our city there is also still
standing a three-story structure of no mean size,
which appears to have from eight to ten rooms on
each floor. Standing upon the sidewalk in front of
this structure and peering through the large arched
entrance into the courtyard, the spectator soon finds
himself dreaming of years that have long rolled by.
In his dreams he sees Frenchmen and Frenchwomen
seated under wide-leafed banana-trees in the court-
‘yard, while slaves serve them refreshing drinks and

St. Paul’s Colored Church, New Orleans.

appetizing food; he sees little French children
playing and laughing at the time when the sun
casts long shadows. All that he sees is so wonderful
and so interesting. Suddenly, however, the spec-
tator is roused out of his pleasant dream by the
noise of the passing trolley car or a honking auto
in the narrow street, and he once more finds him-
self admiring aged walls and an unkept courtyard.

Enter the large arched entrance into the court-
yard to-day and you find that there is nothing left

in this house, just like in other houses of this sec- °

tion, that has been preserved from olden days for
‘the seeker after curios. In the courtyard of this
house and in the house itself all signs of luxury
and wealth have disappeared. Wealth and finery

have given way to poverty and decay. The once
beautiful courtyard, with the passing of the time,
has been turned into a dirty, dusty, and dreary
waste, where poorly clad children play; and the
artistically decorated rooms of bygone days, occu-
pied by persons high up in the world, are now dreary
and dark and occupied by a dozen or more families
living from hand to mouth.

Perhaps it is for this reason that so few visitors
are attracted to this house. Often it has been
noticed that, while admirers will examine many
other structures and have much to say about them,
this house is passed by without so much as a glance.
It holds out no attractions to the visitors and stands
as a forgotten house in the French Quarter.

Though this house stands forgotten, it never-
theless holds out something very fascinating to me,
and so it will to you after you have heard my story.

A fifteen-minute walk from the “forgotten
house,” at a schoolchild’s pace that is late for school,
there is our St. Paul’s Church and School and,
adjoining these, our Luther Preparatory School.
As all our Lutheran churches and schools, so also
St. Paul’s has, and always has had, a very good repu-
tation, so that during the past fifty years many
people have sought and found rest for their soul
in our church, and many a child has learned in our
school the one thing needful, that highest and best
wisdom, which our teachers have imparted to them
from the Word of God.

One beautiful autumn day when the school-
children were again coming from all directions to
our school for their day’s lessons, a little stranger
was among them. This stranger was a shy little
girl of six, a little girl that lived — yes, you
guessed it—in the “forgotten house.” Friendless
and forlorn, a little stranger among strangers, she
wandered about in the schoolyard until one of the
teachers noticed her and made friends with her.
Oh, how happy she was that she had found a friend!
Now she did not feel nearly so forsaken and lost as
before the teacher spoke to her. She soon found
numerous other friends. Before the week was over,
she had a hundred little friends, with whom she
played and romped about and skipped and was gay,
so that she would rather have remained with them
at the end of the day than return to the dirty yard
and dreary rooms of the “forgotten house.”

Almost as quickly as little Eliza had learned to
know her teachers and her playmates, she also had
learned to know her Savior. When she entered the
Lutheran school, she was sitting in spiritual dark-