IVPICAYUNE DAYS
The first time I ever saw a penny was at school in Yankeeland in 1847. It was given me to pay the man for bringing me a letter from the postoffice—10 cents postage, 1 cent delivery, in those days. People had to get their mail at the office. There was no free delivery. Certain neighborhoods of spinsters, however—the college town was full of such—secured the services of a lame, halt or blind man to bring their letters from the office to their door once a day for the stipend of a penny each.
There was no coin in circulation of less value than a picayune where was my home. A picayune, which represented so little value that a miser was called picayunish, at the same time represented such a big value that we children felt rich when we had one tied in the corner of our handkerchief. At the corner of Chartres and Canal Streets was a tiny soda fountain, where one could get a glass of soda for a picayune—or mead. We children liked mead. Inever see it now, but, as I recall, it was a thick, honey, creamy drink. We must have preferred it because it seemed so much more for a picayune than the frothy, effervescent, palish soda water. It was a great lark to go with Pa and take my glass of mead, while he ordered ginger syrup (of all things!) with his soda. The changing years bring gold mines, greenbacks, tariffs, labor exactions andnouveaux riches, and a penny now buys about what a picayune did in my day. One pays a penny for ever so big a newspaper to-day. A picayune was the price of a small sheet in my time.
Market Doorway.
Market Doorway.
Market Doorway.
Many of us must remember the coloredmarchandeswho walked the street with trays, deftly balanced on their heads, arms akimbo, calling out their dainties, which were in picayune piles on the trays—six small celesto figs, or five large blue ones, nestling on fig leaves; lovely popcorn tic tac balls made with that luscious “open kettle” sugar, that dear, fragrant brown sugar no one sees now. Pralines with the same sugar; why, we used it in our coffee. A few years ago, visiting dear Mrs. Ida Richardson, I reveled in our breakfast coffee. “I hope you preserve your taste for brown sugar coffee?” she said. I fairly jumped at the treat.
But amarchandeis passing up the street, and if I am a little girl, I beg a picayune for a praline; if I am an old lady, I invest a picayune in a leaf with sixfigues célestes. Mme. Chose—I don’t give any more definite name, for it is a sub rosa venture on her part—had a soirée last night. Madame buys herchapeauxof Olympe, and hertoilettesfrom Pluche or Ferret, and if her home is way down, even below Esplanade Street, where many Creoles live, she is thrifty and frugal. So this morning a chocolate-coloredmarchande, who usually vends picayune bouquets of violets from madame’sparterre, has her tray filled with picayune stacks of broken nougat pyramid and candied orange and macaroons very daintily arranged on bits of tissue paper. I vividlyrecall encountering way down Royal Street, where no one was loitering to see me, this chocolatemarchande, and recognizing the delicacies of a ball the previous night. I was on my way to call on Mrs. Garnet Duncan, the dear, delightful woman who was such agourmande, and I knew how delicious were those sweets; no one could excel a Creole madame in this confection. So I invested a few picayunes in some of the most attractive, carrying off to my sweet friend what I conveniently could. How she did enjoy them! And how she complained I had not brought more! Themesdamesof that date are gone; gone also, no doubt, are themarchandesthey sent forth. It was a very picayunish sort of business, but labor did not count, for one was not paying $20 a month for the reluctant services of a chocolate lady.
Then again, in the early morning, when one,en papilottes, came down to breakfast, listless and “out of sorts,” the chant of the cream cheese woman would be heard. A rush to the door with a saucer for a cheese, a tiny, heart-shaped cheese, a dash of cream poured from a claret bottle over it—all this for a picayune! How nice and refreshing it was. What a glorious addition to the breakfast that promised to pall on one’s appetite.
Picayune was the standard coin at the market. Iwonder what is now? Soup bone wasun escalin(two picayunes), but one paid for the soup vegetables, a bit of cabbage, a leek, a sprig of parsley, a tiny carrot, a still tinier turnip, all tied in a slender package. Acornetof fresh gumbofilé, a bunch of horse-radish roots, a little sage, parsley, herbs of every sort in packages and piles, a string of dried grasshoppers for the mocking bird, “un picayun,” the Indian or black woman squatting on thebanquetteat the old French Market would tell you.
A picayune was the smallest coin the richly appareled madame or the poor market negro could put in the collection box as she paused on her way at the Cathedral to tell her beads. There was no occasion for the priest to rebuke his flock for niggardliness. They may have been picayunish, but not to the extent of the congregation of one of the largest Catholic churches I wot of to-day, where the fathers were so tired counting pennies that it was announced from the pulpit: “No more pennies must be put in the box. We spend hours every week counting and stacking pennies, and it is a shocking waste of time. If you are so destitute that you can’t afford at least a nickel to your church, come to the vestry, after mass, and we will look into your needs and give you the relief the church always extends to her poor.”
The shabby old negro, with her heavy market basket, returning home, no doubt needing the prayers of her patron saint or some other churchly office, filched the picayune from the carefully counted market money. I know, no matter how carefully my mother doled the market fund to John, he always contrived to secure a picayune out of it, and for no saint, either, but for old Coffee-stand Palmyre.
Do not we old ladies remember the picayune dolls of our childhood? The wooden jointed dolls, the funny little things we had to play with, every feature, even hair and yellow earrings, painted on little, smooth bullet heads. They could be made to sit down and to crook their arms, but no ingenuity could make them stand a-loney. How we loved those little wooden dolls! We do not see a pauper child, not even a poor little blackie, with a picayune doll nowadays. I really believe we—I am talking of old ladies now—were happier, and had more fun with our picayune family than the little girls of the present day have with their $10 dolls, with glass eyes that are sure to fall out and long curls that are sure to tangle. We had no fears about the eyes and hair of our picayunes.
The picayune, whose memory I invoke, was a Spanish coin, generally worn pretty thin and often having a small hole in it. I remember my ambitionwas to accumulate enough picayunes to string on a thread for an ornament. It is unnecessary to say that in those thrifty days my ambition was not gratified. It is more than fifty years since I have seen one of those old 6¼ cent picayunes. I have a stiff, wooden corset board that I sometimes take out to show to my granddaughter when I find her “stooping,” that she may see the instrument that made grandma so straight. I would like to have a picayune to add to my very limited collection of relics. They flourished at the same era and have together vanished from our homes and shops.
We all must have known some “picayune people.” There was a family living near us who owned and occupied a large, fine home on St. Joseph Street, while we and the Grimshaws and Beins lived in rented houses near by. They had, besides, a summer home “over the lake” (and none of us had!). Often, on Mondays, a fish, or a quart of shrimp, or something else in the “over the lake” line, was sent to one of us, for sale. We used to laugh over the littleness of the thing. A quart of shrimp for a picayune was cheap and tempting, but none of us cared to buy of our rich neighbor. The climax came when an umbrella went the rounds for inspection. It was for raffle! Now, umbrellas, like pocket handkerchiefs, are always useful and never go outof fashion. With one accord, we declined chances in the umbrella.
I feel I am, for the fun of the thing, dragging forth a few skeletons from closets, but I do not ticket them, so no harm is done. In fact, if I ever knew, I have long since forgotten the name to tack onto the umbrella skeleton. And the fashionable madame who sent out on the streets what a lady we knew called the “perquisites” of her soirée supper has left too many well-known descendants. I would scorn to ticket the skeleton of that frugal and thrifty madame. There are no more umbrellas for a picayunish skeleton to raffle, no more such delicious sweets for the madame to stack into picayune piles, and, alack-a-day! no more picayunes, either.