were delivered by said mothers, equally absurd, and equally foolish. And
yet this same young lady, according to their own previous showing, was
not only one of the most beautiful in person and manners who had ever
graced their circle, but was also of fine education; and in complexion
as white as the whitest in the village. Truly, this, our human nature,
is extremely strange and vastly inconsistent!

Confessedly, as a class, the quadroon women of New Orleans are the most
beautiful in America. Their personal attractions are not only
irresistible, but they have, in general, the best blood of America in
their veins. They are mostly white in complexion, and are, many of them,
highly educated and accomplished; and yet, by the law of Louisiana, no
man may marry a quadroon woman, unless he can prove that he, too, has
African blood in his veins. A law involving a greater outrage on
propriety, a more blasphemous trifling with the heart's affections, and
evincing a more contemptible tyranny, those who will look at the matter
from the beginning to the end, will agree with me, could not possibly
have been enacted.

Colonel Fuller, of the "_New York Mirror_," writing from New Orleans,
gives some melancholy descriptions--and some amusing ones too--of the
operations of this most barbarous law.

One I especially remember. A planter, it seems, had fallen deeply in
love with a charming quadroon girl. He desired to marry her; but the law
forbade. What was he to do? To tarnish her honour was out of the
question; he had too much himself to seek to tarnish hers. Here was a
dilemma. But he was not to be foiled. What true heart will be, if there
be any virtue in expedients?