Page:A hairdresser's experience in high life.djvu/188

190 not? They call it marriage, but I do not. These young girls are brought up as particularly as any children in the world; they have the very best education that can be given them, are taught music, dancing and every branch of education necessary to the accomplishment of a lady. They are never permitted to walk out to church or school, or any other place, without a servant after them. When they are marriageable, they are courted by the gentlemen the same as any other ladies, till it comes to the ceremony, then there is a large party assembled, and the young girl is given away by her father or mother, or both; this is called placayed; it is the same in their eyes as marriage, but no license is required. Sometimes they live together till they raise generations, then again, others are like some of the license marriages, they stay till they get tired, and then go, some one way, some another.

There came to this soiree a gentleman who had been placayed for thirty-five or forty years, and had been judge in different states. He has, during that time, stuck to his integrity, and lives very elegantly. You might go through his house and see everything in it more elegant than another, and could not tell who his wife was, or what she was, unless you might discover a little tinge in her complexion.

One of the Creole ladies I met at the soiree, I afterward found to be one of the most cruel women I had ever seen or heard tell of. I told her I did wish I had her up in our state a little while, when she would wish she never had owned a slave, or never seen one. I got so outrageously angry at her proceedings, that I got a petition drawn up by an old citizen, and signed