they were barbers, tailors,
carpenters, upholsterers. They were notable successful hunters
and supplied the city with game. As tailors, they were almost
exclusively patronized by the _elite_, so much so that the
Legoasters', the Dumas', the Clovis', the Lacroix', acquired
individually fortunes of several hundred thousands of dollars.
This class was most respectable; they generally married women of
their own status, and led lives quiet, dignified and worthy, in
homes of ease and comfort. A few who had reached a competency
sufficient for it, attempted to settle in France, where there was
no prejudice against their origin; but in more than one case the
experiment was not satisfactory, and they returned to their
former homes in Louisiana. When astonishment was expressed, they
would reply, with a smile: 'It is hard for one who has once
tasted the Mississippi to keep away from it.'

"In fact, the quadroons of Louisiana have always shown a strong
local attachment, although in the state they were subjected to
grievances, which seemed to them unjust, if not cruel. It is
true, they possessed many of the civil and legal rights enjoyed
by the whites, as to the protection of person and property; but
they were disqualified from political rights and social equality.
But ... it is always to be remembered that in their contact with
white men, they did not assume that creeping posture of
debasement--nor did the whites expect it--which has more or less
been forced upon them in fiction. In fact, their handsome,
good-natured faces seem almost incapable of despair. It is true
the whites were superior to them, but they, in their turn, were
superior, and infinitely superior, to the blacks, and had as much
objection to associating with the blacks on terms of equality as
any white men could have to associating with them. At the Orleans
theatre they attended their mothers, wives, and sisters in the
second tier, reserved exclusively for them, and where no white
person of either sex would have been permitted to intrude. But
they were not admitted to the quadroon balls, and when white
gentlemen visited their families it was the accepted etiquette
for them never to be present.

"Nevertheless it must not be imagined that the amenities were not
observed when the men o