The Creole Village - Page 2

having a voice in public legislation.

A few aged men, who have grown gray on their hereditary acres, and are of
the good old colonial stock, exert a patriarchal sway in all matters of
public and private import; their opinions are considered oracular, and
their word is law.

The inhabitants, moreover, have none of that eagerness for gain and rage
for improvement which keep our people continually on the move, and our
country towns incessantly in a state of transition. There the magic
phrases, "town lots," "water privileges," "railroads," and other
comprehensive and soul-stirring words from the speculator's vocabulary, are
never heard. The residents dwell in the houses built by their forefathers,
without thinking of enlarging or modernizing them, or pulling them down and
turning them into granite stores. The trees, under which they have been
born and have played in infancy, flourish undisturbed; though, by cutting
them down, they might open new streets, and put money in their pockets. In
a word, the almighty dollar, that great object of universal devotion
throughout our land, seems to have no genuine devotees in these peculiar
villages; and unless some of its missionaries penetrate there, and erect
banking houses and other pious shrines, there is no knowing how long the
inhabitants may remain in their present state of contented poverty.

In descending one of our great Western rivers in a steam-boat, I met with
two worthies from one of these villages, who had been on a distant
excursion, the longest they had ever made, as they seldom ventured far from
home. One was the great man, or grand seigneur, of the village; not that he
enjoyed any legal privileges or power there, everything of the kind having
been done away when the province was ceded by France to the United States.
His sway over his neighbors was merely one of custom and convention, out of
deference to his family. Beside, he was worth full fifty thousand dollars,
an amount almost equal, in the imaginations of the villagers, to the
treasures of King Solomon.

This very substantial old gentleman, though of the fourth or fifth
generation in this country, retained the true Gallic feature and
deportment, and reminded me of one of those provincial potentates that are
to be met with in the remote parts of France. He was of a large frame, a
ginger-bread complexion, strong features, eyes that stood out like glass
knobs, and a prominent nose, which he frequently regaled from a gold
snuff-box, and occasionally blew, with a colored handkerchief, until it
sounded like a trumpet.

He was attended by an old negro, as black as ebony, with a huge mouth in a
continual grin; evidently a privileged and favorite servant, who had