Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/21

Rh Mr. S. is a lively little man, with a Creole grace of demeanour, very loquacious and kind. He is married—a second marriage—to a French Creole of New Orleans, and has by her several most beautiful little boys, with dark eyes and dark flowing locks, like little French children. The wife was also lovely, an excellent, simple creature, who never before had seen an authoress, and now seemed somewhat astonished to find her like other people, able to talk like them also. She seemed to have an idea that a person who wrote a book must talk like a book.

The New Orleans dinner was remarkably good, and gumbo is the crown of all the savoury and remarkable soups in the world—a regular elixir of life of the substantial kind. He who has once eaten gumbo may look down disdainfully upon the most genuine turtle soup. After dinner, my hostess, her sister, and myself had a charming gossip over the fire. It was a real refreshment both for tongue and ear to listen to, and to talk French after that unmelodious and confused English language.

In the evening I drank tea with a family of the name of C., planters of Louisiana. Deep sorrow for the loss of two promising children seemed to have depressed the father, and almost crushed the heart of the mother. One daughter, Julia, still remains. When I behold the dance of the moonbeams on the waves; when I perceive the scent of violets and the glance of the mild forget-me-not; when I see anything which is lovely and full of life, full of innocence and the joy of existence, but which, at the same time, looks as if it would not long linger on earth ;—I shall think, Julia of thee, and long to clasp thee once more to my heart, thou pale, lovely, beaming child of the South, and to hold thee yet on earth, that thy mother's heart may not break, and that thy father and thy home may yet have some light!

On the 31st of December I went with my kind and estimable physician to witness a slave-auction, which took