Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/58

Rh how many who would not allow themselves to approach her, because they knew that they could not give her pleasure by so doing, nor would venture to invite her to their homes for the same reason.

I remember hearing an estimable old gentleman, a judge at Cincinnati—a magnificent old man he was!—say that he accompanied her, in the newspapers, every step of her journey, with that interest and solicitude which a father might have for his daughter; and that he felt real distress that she should, in any degree, compromise her beautiful reputation by any unadvised step. And I have heard so much said about Jenny Lind in America, that I know that while people love in her the singer and the giver of money, they love still more the young woman, in her beautiful rôle and reputation—the ideal Jenny Lind.

But I must now speak of Louisiana and New Orleans. Louisiana, as you know, was first discovered by the Spaniards and French. The French were the first who attempted to colonise Louisiana. They began and left off, and then began afresh. It would not succeed. But a great deal was said in France and England about Louisiana as a promised land, an Eldorado, with immeasurable internal wealth ready to be brought to light, and faith in this gave rise to the gigantic financial speculation of John Law, based upon the fabulous, delusive wealth of Louisiana, and afterwards to the great bankruptcy of all who had taken part in that wild speculation. Louisiana, or that vast country embracing the southern part of the Mississippi, and which at that time included Arkansas, passed afterwards from the dominion of the French to that of the Spaniards, then back to that of the French, until, in the year 1803, Louisiana was purchased by the government of the United States, and united to them as an independent state. In the meantime, Louisiana had been cultivated and peopled by the French, Spaniards, English, Germans, and other nations, and New Orleans had slowly grown up,