CHAP. XXVII.] CREOLE LADIES. 115- 



the case in some theatres here. The French Creole 

 ladies, many of them descended from Norman ances 

 tors, and of pure unmixed blood, are very handsome. 

 They were attired in Parisian fashion, not over dressed, 

 usually not so thin as the generality of American 

 women ; their luxuriant hair tastefully arranged, 

 fastened with ornamental pins, and adorned simply 

 with a coloured riband or a single flower. My wife 

 learnt from one of them afterwards, that they usually 

 pay, by the month, a quadroon female hairdresser, a 

 refinement in which the richest ladies in Boston 

 would not think of indulgiug. The word Creole is 

 used in Louisiana to express a native-born Ame 

 rican, whether black or white, descended from old 

 world parents, for they would not call the abo 

 riginal Indians, Creoles. It never means persons of 

 mixed breed ; and the French or Spanish Creoles 

 here would shrink as much as a New Englander 

 from intermarriage with one tainted, in the slightest 

 degree, with African blood. The frequent alliances 

 of the Creoles, or Louisianians, of French extraction 

 with lawyers and merchants from the Northern States, 

 help to cement the ties which are every day binding 

 more firmly together the distant parts of the Union. 

 Both races may be improved by such connection, for 

 the manners of the Creole ladies are, for the most 

 part, more refined ; and many a Louisianian might 

 justly have felt indignant if he could have overheard 

 a conceited young bachelor from the North telling 

 me &quot; how much they were preferred by the fair sex 

 to the hard-drinking, gambling, horse-racing, cock- 

 fighting, and tobacco-chewing Southerners.&quot; If the 



