e-spirit of America sometimes illustrates
itself in rather ridiculous ways.

A beautiful young lady--a friend of mine--attended, about two years
since, one of the most aristocratic Schools of one of the most
aristocratic Villages of New York. She was warmly welcomed in the
highest circles, and so amiable in temper was she, as well as agreeable
in mind and person, that she soon became not only a favorite, but _the_
favorite of the circle in which she moved. The _young gentlemen_ of the
village were especially interested in her, and what matrimonial offer
might eventually have been made her, it is not for me to say. At the
close of the second term, however, she left the school and the village;
and then, for the first time, the fact became known (previously known
only to her own room-mate) that she was slightly of African blood.
Reader,--the consternation and horror which succeeded this "new
development," are, without exaggeration, perfectly indescribable. The
people drew long breaths, as though they had escaped from the fangs of a
boa constrictor; the old ladies charged their daughters, that should
Miss ---- be seen in that village again, by no means to permit
themselves to be seen in the street with her; and many other charges
were delivered by said mothers, equally absurd, and equally foolish. And
yet this same young lady, according to their own previous showing, was
not only one of the most beautiful in person and manners who had ever
graced their circle, but was also of fine education; and in complexion
as white as the whitest in the village. Truly, this, our human nature,
is extremely strange and vastly inconsistent!

Confessedly, as a class, the quadroon women of New Orleans are the most
beautiful in America. Their personal attractions are not only
irresistible, but they have, in general, the best blood of America in
their veins. They are mostly white in complexion, and are, many of them,
highly educated and accomplished; and yet, by the law of Louisiana, no
man may marry a quadroon woman, unless he can prove that he, too, has
African blood in his veins. A law involving a greater outrage on
propriety, a more blasphemous trifling with the heart's affections, and
evincing a more contemptible tyranny, those who will look at the matter
from the beginning to the end, will agree with me, could not possibly
have been enacted.

Colonel Fuller, of the "_New York Mirror_," writing from New Orleans,
gives some melancholy de