Excerpt from The Story of Louisiana Such a story is not to be well told by him who runs as he tells it. Easy reading for an ease-loving public is prepared at the expense of untiring labor, even when genius drives the pen and fiction is the product most desired; much more is it a work of toil when the mere uninspired compiler of events is expected to link and group dry facts in a way that will insure the most truthful and at the same time the most picturesque impression of the history involved. The novelist may, nay, he must, take liberties with truth. The historian has no alternative; he must follow the current of his subject from fact to fact and take things just as they present themselves. This Procrustean de mand of truth presents to the writer a limitation singularly inimical to unity of effect and peculiarly deadly to dramatic directness of presentation, especially when the history in hand is to be so brief as to enforce the utmost economy of phrasing. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.