ollowers for other climes, but what became of them is not known. Some
think their ship went down in a storm which crossed the Gulf soon after
their departure; others believe that they reached Yucatan, and that
Lafitte died there. Whatever his fate, he did not improve it by
departing from New Orleans, for had he not done so he would, at the end,
have been given a handsome burial and a nice monument like that of
Dominique You--which may be seen to this day in the old cemetery on
Claiborne Avenue, between Iberville and St. Louis Streets.

Having disposed of literary men and pirates, we now come in logical
sequence to composers and actors. Be it known, then, that E.H. Sothern
first raised, in the house at 79 Bienville Street, the voice which has
charmed us in the theater, and that Louis Gottschalk, composer of the
almost too well-known "Last Hope," was also born in New Orleans.

The records of the opera and the theater might, in themselves, make a
chapter. As early as 1791 a French theatrical company played in New
Orleans, using halls, and in 1808 a theater was built in St. Philip
Street. It is said that the first play given in the city in English was
performed December 24, 1817, the play being "The Honey Moon," and the
manager Noah M. Ludlow; but it was not until some years later that the
English drama became a feature of the city's life, with the
establishment of a stock company under the management of James H.
Caldwell. Edwin Forrest appeared, in 1824, with Mr. Caldwell's company
at the Camp Street Theater, which he built on leaving the Orleans
Theater. The former was, when opened, out in the swamp, and people had
to walk to it from Canal Street on a narrow path of planks. It was the
first building in the city to be lighted by gas.

The annals of the old St. Charles theater, called "old Drury," are rich
with history. Practically all our great players from 1835 until long
after the Civil War, appeared in this theater, and an old prompter's
book which, I believe, is still in existence, records, among many other
things, certain details of the appearance there, in 1852, of Junius
Brutus Booth, father of Edwin Booth, and mentions also that Joseph
Jefferson (Sr.) then a young man, was reprimanded for being noisy in his
dressing-room.

New Orleans was, I believe, the first American city regularly to support
grand opera and to give it a home. For a great many years before 1859
(in which year the present French Opera House on