Madame Delphine

nt century, the free quadroon caste o

ad-dresses,-these earlier generations, with scars of battle or private rencontre still on the fathers, and of servitude on the manumitted mothers, afforded a mere hint of the splendor that was to result from a survival of the fairest through seventy-five years devoted to the elimination of the black pigment and the cultivation of hyperian excellence and nymphean grace and beauty. Nor, if we

rfection of form, their varied styles of beauty,-for there were even pure Caucasian blondes among them,-their fascinating manners, their sparkling vivacity, their chaste and pretty wit, their grace in the dance, their modest propriety, their taste and elegance in dress. In the gentlest and most poet

te, federal,-those of the army, of the learned professions and of the clubs,-in short, the white male aristocracy in everything save the ecclesiastical desk,-were there. Tickets were high-priced to insure the exclusion of the vulg

er, could have told you all about it;

let us call him so for her sake-was long dead. He was an American, and, if we take her word for

rson, the neighbors said,-a very worthy person; and they were, may be, nearer correct than they knew. They rarely saw her save when she went to or returned from church; a

fence on the Royal-street sidewalk. It is gone now, and was out of use then, being fa

to speak of a