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a hair-dresser's experience

the clothes she could lay her hands on, passed through the city, and made for Canada.

I knew a gentleman who was cashier to one of the largest banks in New Orleans who married a colored woman. He got a physician to transfer some of her blood into his veins and then went to the court and swore he had colored blood in him. A gentleman of high position from Pennsylvania, having gone down South bought him a housekeeper; as soon as she became the mistress of the house, she became hard to please. One morning she went in the kitchen to command the cook, who answered her impudently; the lady flew to the gentleman, who gave her a note for the woman to take to the calaboose, saying, give the bearer thirty-nine lashes. The mistress, afraid the servant would not get the lashes, took the note herself; after reading it the officers took hold of her and cut her back almost to pieces; she, running home furious, showed the gentleman her back, he flew to the calaboose with pistol and bowie knife, but for fear of being arrested, did not use them.

During my visits to New Orleans every winter, I saw many amusing and affecting scenes, one of which was the following: A servant went to New Orleans as nurse, a gentleman of high standing married her, he bought two slaves, one of whom was a very old woman, and, as every bond woman does, she treated this old woman very severely, made her get up at four o'clock and work about the house, and then do a day's work; if she did not bring her day's earning every evening, let her get it or not, although she was a woman of fifty years of age, she was severely punished. The old woman went to a colored woman to get