Waterbury evening Democrat., 1889-01-07
THE FRENCH cREOLES.
Some of the Peculiarities of This Simple
 Minded People.

Some of the Peculiarities of This Simple
 Minded People.
 The French creoles of the lower class are hand to mouth class of people, purchasing the stick of wood today and the handful of herbs that are to cook and season their po- tage filling their small market baskets with innumerable pinches of this, that and the other, laying in few sous of sugar and cof- fee at time, and-going next day, for 365 days in the year, and doing identically the same thing, ill saecula sseculorum Dislike to the accumulation of household goods, to we'll stored cellars and pantrles, to generous abundance. to picturesque profusion, to the essentials of large handed hospitality even within the narrow limits of their neighbor- hood acquaintances, an ant like economy and abstemiousness, curious juxtaposition of eternal self restraint and a passion for sensa- tions, colors, sounds, perfumes, fantastic sen- sualities, an instinct for microscopic money getting welded to an instinct that has filled New Orleans with noble institutions for the poor, the blind, the sick, the world weary; a passion for novels and for splendid churches, fond endurance of rigors of cold and hunger for the brilliant aff1orescence of careme- prenant and Carnival a voluntary exile from all laughter and joy that their feet may twinkle night or two on the mirrored floors of the masque balls down in Chartres and Royal streets; such are the fragments of sweet and bitter herbs that go to make up part of the paradox of creole character and communicate to it an indefinable piquancy and strangeness by their thick bars of light and shadow.
 The chief charm of this character is a touching gentleness and benignity that blends all other characteristics and permeates the whole constitution of the native creole. There is something elegiac, tender, dreamy about the race, a remnant or recollection of earlier and better days, an aroma of exile coming from old colonial times, when so many emil grated from the gay fatherland to the track less wilderness of Louisiana, seeking their fortunes Disappointment seems to have im- pressed itself a trait of heredity on their spiritual make up; breeding languor has spread from the luxurious climate through the limbs and constitutions of the imni- grants, the adventurous spirit of the mar vicious brothers Bienville, 1berville and Sau- valle, laid under perpetual embargo by a Chinese wall of swamp, bayou and bogue, has sunk into Q curious psychological numb ness and content with surroundings; geogra- phy, exploration, literature, research, travel beyond the inevitable transit to France once in a lifetime) are unknown luxuries to these lotus eating folk, and in their way they are as still ill their sunny corner as the sun loving alligator that haunts their streams
 The customs, games and sports of these exiles are full of "reminiscences of the father i land, mingled with odd accretions and after growths, a clinging conservatism, poetic susceptibility. There are songs and Christ mas customs smacking of Gascony, Provence Champagne, San Domingo, Franche- Comte, such as finger in Canada and form touching links with the folk over the sea-James A. Harrison ill Autrefois.