Page:A hairdresser's experience in high life.djvu/159

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IN HIGH LIFE.
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making him believe she would take him for her lawful "placeyer," but when the evening came on that he looked for the fulfillment of her promise, she deceived him, and took another. He went home and blew out his brains right in his father's house. Did these people treat her with contempt? No, they always treated her both before and after that as a lady, and the last time I was in New Orleans they were living beside each other, in good neighborhood and good fellowship, and she was seen daily going out to the grave-yard strewing flowers over his tomb. Such occurrences as these are frequent. I could neither find paper nor time to tell you half of such things as came under my notice.

I will now tell you of a lady I know, who was raised in high life in New York. She married a gentleman from the South, a very elegant looking man, and she thought wealthy, supposing the wealth followed the looks—as the northern ladies generally think when a man comes from the South, who is fine looking, elegantly dressed, and so forth, he must be wealthy, but it is not so, for many come to the North to pick up a rich wife, that are depending on the wages of some poor old man or woman, and it may be, had their lands to mortgage to get the money for them to flourish on. I myself, went to the house this lady's husband brought her to, a few miles from Memphis, and found it a log cabin; true she had a piano and some pieces of silver, and a great many costly things that were presented her on her leaving New York to go to her wealthy home. What a change for her from her three story brick on a fashionable street, to a little log cabin in the country, a few miles from Memphis!