Page:A hairdresser's experience in high life.djvu/182

184 one of them. These young ladies were cousins to a lady who married a trader in Nashville, Tenn. They often used to ask me about this lady, and I frequently remarked that it was a wonder to me how a refined lady, as she seemed to be, could marry such a degraded trader. I was not then aware that they were connections.

This lady and her sister visited the St. Charles nearly every season, literally loaded with diamonds. All the fortune-hunters ran after her, as her husband, when he died, left her some millions of dollars; and these seekers-of-wealth cared but litttle how the money was made, though there were many ladies there who would not associate with her owing to her lowering herself by marrying such a man. I have known him bring, from Nashville and Virginia, the largest droves of slaves that were brought into the market; he has often taken a fine child from a poor-looking woman, and given it to a fine-looking woman, who had a delicate child of her own, to sell together, and given her little one to the other. Again, he would make a woman marry a man, let her like him or not, should a gentleman come along who wished to have a man and wife. Anything to make money.

As the weather was getting warm, and the ladies leaving very fast, I determined, what I had not seen in past years, I would see now; so I went to the highest circles, then to the lowest; to the free people, and to slave people; and every-where it was proper for a woman to go. I could not but notice, in some of the wealthy families, where there were but three or four in a family, and five or six servants, these were well treated; again, in other places, where there