e a second time, if courtesy or
a guest required.

"The free quadroon women of middle age were generally in easy
circumstances, and comfortable in their mode of living. They
owned slaves, skilful hairdressers, fine washerwomen,
accomplished seamstresses, who brought them in a handsome
revenue. Expert themselves at all kinds of needle-work, and not
deficient in taste, some of them rose to the importance of
modistes, and fashioned the dresses of the elegantes among the
white ladies. Many of them made a specialty of making the fine
linen shirts worn at that day by gentlemen and were paid two
dollars and a half apiece for them, at which rate of profit a
quadroon woman could always earn a honest, comfortable living.
Besides, they monopolized the renting, at high prices, of
furnished rooms to white gentlemen. This monopoly was easily
obtained, for it was difficult to equal them in attention to
their tenants, and the tenants indeed could have been hard to
please had they not been satisfied. These rooms, with their large
post bedsteads, immaculate linen, snowy mosquito bars, were
models of cleanliness and comfort. In the morning the nicest cup
of hot coffee was brought to the bedside; in the evening, at the
foot of the bed, there stood the never failing tub of fresh water
with sweet-smelling towels. As landladies they were both menials
and friends, and always affable and anxious to please. A cross
one would have been a phenomenon. If their tenants fell ill, the
old quadroons and, under their direction, the young ones, were
the best and kindest of nurses. Many of them, particularly those
who came from St. Domingo, were expert in the treatment of yellow
fever. Their honesty was proverbial."--GRACE KING, _New Orleans,
the Place and People_, pp. 346-349.

CASWALL'S ACCOUNT OF BISHOP POLK'S EFFORTS IN LOUISIANA IN 1854

"Bishop Polk, of Louisiana, was one of the guests. He assured me
that he had been all over the country on Red River, the scene of
the fictitious sufferings of 'Uncle Tom,' and that he had found
the temporal and spiritual welfare of the negroes well cared for.
He had confirmed thirty black persons near the situation assigned
to Legree's estate. He is himself the owner of four hundred
slaves, whom he endeavours to bring up in a religious