death to a stain, and the soul which never stoops to a lie, a fraud, or a meanness degrading to a gentleman.  They have been born upon the banks of the great river of the world; they have seen all the developments of talent, time, and enterprise which have made their country great as the river through which it flows.  Accustomed from infancy to look upon this scene and these developments, their souls with their ideas have been sublimated, and they are a population unsurpassed in the higher attributes of humanity, and the nobler sympathies of man, by any on the face of the earth—­surrounded by wealth, tangible and substantial, descending from generation to generation, affording to each all the blessings wealth can give.

The spirit of hospitality and independence has ennobled the sons, as hereditary wealth and privilege had the sires who planted this colony.  These sires laid the foundation of this wealth, in securing for their posterity the broad acres of this fat-land where now they are to be found.  None have emigrated:  conscious of possessing the noblest heritage upon earth, they have remained to eliminate from this soil the wealth which in such abundance they possess.  As they were reared, they have reared their sons; the lessons of truth, virtue, honor have borne good fruit.  None can say they ever knew a French Creole a confirmed drunkard or a professional gambler.  None ever knew an aberration of virtue in a daughter of one.

The high-bred Creole lady is a model of refinement—­modest, yet free in her manners; chaste in her thoughts and deportment; generous in her opinions, and full of charity; highly cultivated intellectually and by association; familiar from travel with the society of Europe; mistress of two, and frequently of half a dozen languages, versed in the literature of all.  Accustomed from infancy to deport themselves as ladies, with a model before them in their mothers, they grow up with an elevation of sentiment and a propriety of deportment which distinguishes them as the most refined and polished ladies in the whole country.  There is with these a softness of deportment and delicacy of expression, an abstinence from all violent and boisterous expressions of their feelings and sentiments, and above all, the entire freedom from petty scandal, which makes them lovely, and to be loved by every honorable and high-bred gentleman who may chance to know them and cultivate their association.  Indeed, this is a characteristic of the gentlemen as well as the ladies.

These people may have a feud, and sometimes they do; but this rarely remains long unsettled.  No one will ever hear it publicly alluded to, and assuredly they will never hear it uttered in slanderous vituperation of the absent party.  I may be permitted here to narrate an incident illustrative of this peculiarity.