d who would call if they knew its story."
Another writes: "The landlord's orders are positive that no photographer
of any kind shall come into his house."

The house has three stories and an attic. The windows farthest from the
street are masked by long, green latticed balconies or "galleries," one to
each story, which communicate with one another by staircases behind the
lattices and partly overhang a small, damp, paved court which is quite
hidden from outer view save from one or two neighboring windows. On your
right as you look down into this court a long, narrow wing stands out at
right angles from the main house, four stories high, with the latticed
galleries continuing along the entire length of each floor. It bounds this
court on the southern side. Each story is a row of small square rooms, and
each room has a single high window in the southern wall and a single door
on the hither side opening upon the latticed gallery of that floor. Wings
of that sort were once very common in New Orleans in the residences of the
rich; they were the house's slave quarters. But certainly some of the
features you see here never were common--locks seven inches across;
several windows without sashes, but with sturdy iron gratings and solid
iron shutters. On the fourth floor the doorway communicating with the main
house is entirely closed twice over, by two pairs of full length batten
shutters held in on the side of the main house by iron hooks eighteen
inches long, two to each shutter. And yet it was through this doorway that
the ghosts--figuratively speaking, of course, for we are dealing with
plain fact and history--got into this house.

Will you go to the belvedere? I went there once. Unless the cramped stair
that reaches it has been repaired you will find it something rickety. The
newspapers, writing fifty-five years ago in the heat and haste of the
moment, must have erred as to heavy pieces of furniture being carried up
this last cramped flight of steps to be cast out of the windows into the
street far below. Besides, the third-story windows are high enough for the
most thorough smashing of anything dropped from them for that purpose.

The attic is cut up into little closets. Lying in one of them close up
under the roof maybe you will still find, as I did, all the big iron keys
of those big iron locks down-stairs. The day I stepped up into this
belvedere it was shaking visibly in a squall of wind. An electric storm
was coming o