French element of Louisiana can have to resist absorption when the flood of emigration begins to pour southward with the advancing lines of railway?
The chances, in our opinion, are rather in favor of the Canadian French resisting longer than our own Creoles — unless the French element should be kept up by a continuous immigration. Old manners and customs and dialects and families endure longer in a severe Northern climate than in a semi-tropical land like our own. As we near the tropics decay becomes more rapid — not only material decay of substance, but decay of social conditions and institutions as well. Our French element is not composed, however, of such stern stuff as the French people of Canada. They have become semitropicalized here; — they have felt the enchantment of a climate of perennial mildness, and have lived for generations under very different
