32 



HOW THE AUTHOR WAS LED TO 



But anxious as he was to maintain this young Creole 

 lady in the position and -s^ath the fortune which she 

 had always enjoyed, he would not embark until he 

 had accomplished, with her consent, a religious and 

 holy act. This was the manumission of his slaves — of 

 those, at least, above the age of twenty -one ; the 

 young, whom he was prevented by the American law 

 fi'om setting free, received from him their future 

 liberty, and, on attaining their majority, were to rejoin 

 their parents. He never lost sight of them. Tliey 

 were always before his eyes ; he knew their names, 

 their ages, and their appointed hour of libei-ty. In 

 his French home, he took note of these epochs, and 

 would say, with a glow of happiness, ' To-day, such 

 an one becomes free ! ' 



" See my father now in his native country, happy 

 in a residence near his birth-place — building, planting, 

 bringing up his family, the centre of a young world in 

 which everything sprung from him : the house, the 

 garden, were his creation ; even his wife, whom he had 

 reared and trained, and whom everybody thought to 

 be his daughter. My mother was so young that her 

 eldest daughter seemed to be her sister. Five other 

 children followed, almost in as many successive years, 

 promptly enwreathing my father with a living garland, 

 which was his special pride. Few families exhibited a 

 greater variety of tastes and temperaments; the two worlds 

 were distinctly represented in ours : the French of the 

 south with the sparkling vivacity of Languedoc^ — the grave 

 colonists of Louisiana marked from their birth with the 

 phlegmatic idiosyncrasies of the American character. 



m 



