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It is the equivalent of the thirteenth roll in a 'baker's dozen. It is something thrown in, gratis, for good measure. The custom originated in the Spanish quarter of the city. When a child or a servant buys something in a shop or even the mayor or the governor, for aught I know he finishes the operation by saying 'Give me something for lagniappe.
"Look here," said the Goblin, mildly, speaking from a blue cloud of Murray's Mixture, "we must all sign a protocol, or a mandamus or a lagniappe or whatever you law men call it, not to steal a march. I think we'd all like to meet the real Kathleen. But we must give a bond to start fair and square, and nobody do anything that isn't authorized by the whole club." "Right-O!" cried several voices.
These people were in intimate communication with the Indians: in the south the Spaniards were robbing, slaughtering, enslaving and converting them; higher up, the English were trading beads and blankets to them for a consideration, and throwing in civilization and whiskey, 'for lagniappe; and in Canada the French were schooling them in a rudimentary way, missionarying among them, and drawing whole populations of them at a time to Quebec, and later to Montreal, to buy furs of them.
It has struck me that the sum was about what a man who had just cleaned up fifty thousand might regard as a sort of `extra' `for lagniappe' and that he might have thought it an appropriate amount to invest in a present some jewels perhaps to place in the hair of a pretty friend!" She sprang to her feet, furious, but he stood in front of her and was able to bar the way for a moment.
When you are invited to drink, and this does occur now and then in New Orleans and you say, 'What, again? no, I've had enough; the other party says, 'But just this one time more this is for lagniappe. When the beau perceives that he is stacking his compliments a trifle too high, and sees by the young lady's countenance that the edifice would have been better with the top compliment left off, he puts his 'I beg pardon no harm intended, into the briefer form of 'Oh, that's for lagniappe. If the waiter in the restaurant stumbles and spills a gill of coffee down the back of your neck, he says 'For lagniappe, sah, and gets you another cup without extra charge.
It was the little Jew girl who spoke, and Tony's wife roused herself from her knitting to rise and count out the multi-hued candy which should go in exchange for the dingy nickel grasped in warm, damp fingers. Three long sticks, carefully wrapped in crispest brown paper, and a half dozen or more of pink candy fish for lagniappe, and the little Jew girl sped away in blissful contentment.
To-day I heard a schoolmistress ask, 'Where is John gone? This form is so common so nearly universal, in fact that if she had used 'whither' instead of 'where, I think it would have sounded like an affectation. We picked up one excellent word a word worth traveling to New Orleans to get; a nice limber, expressive, handy word 'lagniappe. They pronounce it lanny-yap. It is Spanish so they said.
The meeting held at the Baptist church to ratify the outrage was composed of a lot of self-seekers and whining hypocrites, half of whom would sell their souls for a copper cent and throw in their risen Lord as lagniappe. It was a mob that writhed and wriggled in its own putridity like so many maggots, while the local press cowered before its impotent wrath like young skye-terriers before a skunk.
And madame, who understood and knew his ways, would fry him some of the bananas, and set it before him, a tempting dish, with a bit of madame's bread and meat and coffee thrown in for lagniappe; and Mr. Baptiste would depart, filled and contented, leaving the load of fruit behind as madame's pay.
The very small voice at his feet must have pleased him, for his black brows relaxed into a smile, and he poked the little one's chin with a hard, dirty finger, as he emptied the ridiculously small bucket of charcoal into the child's bucket, and gave a banana for lagniappe.
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