“It’s not an easy thing to describe one’s first impression of New Orleans: for while it actually resembles no other city upon the face of the earth, yet it recalls vague memories of a hundred cities. It owns suggestions of towns in Italy, and in Spain, cities in England and in Germany, of seaports in the Mediterranean, and of seaports in the tropics.”- 1877 essay “At the Gate of the Tropics,” Lafcadio Hearn.

And furthermore…

“Times are not good here. The city is crumbling into ashes. It has been buried under a lava flood of taxes and frauds and maladministrations so that it has become only a study for archaeologists. Its condition is so bad that when I write about it, as I intend to do soon, nobody will believe I am telling the truth. But it is better to live here in sackcloth and ashes, than to own the whole state of Ohio.”