1912 - Social Life in Old New Orleans,

'There was a large hotel (there may be still - it is sixty years since I saw it), mostly consisting of spacious verandas, up and down and all around, at the lake end of the shellroad, where parties could have a fish dinner and enjoy the salt breezes, but a dinner at 'Lake End' was an occasion, not a climax to a shopping trip. The old shellroad was a long drive, Bayou St. John on one side, swamps on the other, green with rushes and palmetto, clothed with gay flowers of the swamp flag. The road terminated at Lake Pontchartrain, and there the restful piazza and well-served dinner refreshed the inner woman.'

'There was no coin in circulation of less value than a picayune...we children felt rich when we had one tied in the corner of our handkerchief.'

'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...'

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