Page:A hairdresser's experience in high life.djvu/153

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IN HIGH LIFE.
155

knowing he was colored; but it is not more so than a rich white lady of Virginia, who was a belle at the St. Charles, and every place she visited, marrying a man, said to be a millionaire, whose mother was a mulatto, and his father a Frenchman, who sent him to Paris and had him educated. He came back highly educated, a wealthy gentleman, and greatly sought after for his millions and his handsome appearance, and he married this great belle. Many knew who he was, but on account of his millions and his father, nothing was said. His mother I saw, a few years ago, in Massachusetts; she would not know him if she saw him. And there are many in the same situation; for I know two sisters now, who often visit Saratoga, from St. Louis, who married two brothers on account of their wealth. They are very nice women; but it is known by many that they were born in slavery, but raised free, and well educated. On one occasion, while in Saratoga, they were coming to the dinner-table, and some ladies, who came along, said they were not white, they looked like negroes. One of their husbands, a fine-looking man, heard the remark, and after dinner sought out the husband of the lady, who was a diminutive bit of a creature, and made him take back all his wife had said; he was glad to do so with many apologies, and the next morning he and his family were missing. All this is nothing; for, in our Queen City of the West, I know hundreds of mulattoes who are married to white men, and lawfully married. Some of these pass for white, and some, again, are so independent they will be thought nothing but what they are.

A few years ago there was a marriage in Saratoga