with me.' The host was too much of a Chesterfield not to dine a second time, if courtesy or a guest required.
"The free quadroon women of middle age were generally in easy circumstances, and comfortable in their mode of living. They owned slaves, skilful hairdressers, fine washerwomen, accomplished seamstresses, who brought them in a handsome revenue. Expert themselves at all kinds of needle-work, and not deficient in taste, some of them rose to the importance of modistes, and fashioned the dresses of the elegantes among the white ladies. Many of them made a specialty of making the fine linen shirts worn at that day by gentlemen and were paid two dollars and a half apiece for them, at which rate of profit a quadroon woman could always earn an honest, comfortable living. Besides, they monopolized the renting, at high prices, of furnished rooms to white gentlemen. This monopoly was easily obtained, for it was difficult to equal them in attention to their tenants, and the tenants indeed would have been hard to please had they not been satisfied. These rooms, with their large post bedsteads, immaculate linen, snowy mosquito bars, were models of cleanliness and comfort. In the morning the nicest cup of hot coffee was brought to the bedside; in the evening, at the foot of the bed, there stood the never failing tub of fresh water with sweet-smelling towels. As landladies they were both menials and friends, and always affable and anxious to please. A cross one would have been a phenomenon. If their tenants fell ill, the old quadroons and, under their direction, the young ones, were the best and kindest of nurses. Many of them, particularly those who came from St. Domingo, were expert in the treatment of yellow fever. Their honesty was proverbial."
The desire of distinction, to rise from a lower level to social equality with a superior race, was implanted in the heart of the quadroon, as in that of all women. Hence an aversion on their part to marrying men of their own colour, and hence their relaxation and deviation from, if not their complete denial of, the code of morality accepted by white women, and their consequent adoption of a separate standard of morals for them-
