I here find myself once more among friends, Mr. Lerner H., Mr. and Mrs. G., with whom I shall, in about an hour's time, drive out upon a road, about six miles long, made of cockle-shells, which runs along the shore. It is one of the remarkable things of New Orleans. Mr. G. resides at Cincinnati, but has business at New Orleans, and he and his wife will remain at an hotel here during the winter months, together with their two children, two magnificent boys, the youngest still quite young, and their nurse, a stout, capital negro woman, a free negro, but bound by the silken bonds of attachment, stronger than the iron fetters of slavery. Many families take up their abode thus at hotels for several months, and many young couples live in the same way also during the first monthsof their marriage. That, however, is not so much because they relish hotel life, as because it is very expensive to establish themselves in their own houses in America, and a family generally will have a house wholly to themselves. A young couple will frequently not wait to be married until they are wealthy enough "to keep house," as it is termed. That, however, in the mean time, is the object after which they strive. I have heard many ladies complain of the emptiness and weariness of life in an hotel, and deplore its influence on young girls, who have in it only too many temptations to live merely for pleasure, admiration, and vanity.

Later. I have seen Octavia once more the ornament of society, although still pale and her eyes red with weeping, dressed in grand costume, in a black satin dress, which, from its many points and adornments, I call Yucca gloriosa, surrounded by a little court of gentlemen, "faire la belle conversation," in one of the splendid drawing-rooms of the hotel. Friends and admirers will soon make Octavia lively here, and I can now leave her comfortably, and go to a quieter home and to my amiable North Americans. Octavia is a rose, Anne W. is a

diamond, Mrs. G. a genuine pearl, and you-you are my Agatha!

My dear Heart!

Annunciation Street, January 19th.

*

*

January 20th. I began to write, but was interrupted, on the second day after my removal to this good, quiet home, the home of a young couple, gentle and quiet people, who seem to live wholly and entirely for each other and their two little children, the youngest still a baby, just now beginning to open his little rosy mouth, and smile and coo. It was the most glorious weather on the afternoon and evening of the day on which I removed here; I can not describe the deliciousness of the air, the serenity of the heavens, the enchanting beauty of the sun, the clouds, the moon, and the stars on this day, when merely to live, to see, and to breathe sufficed to give a fullness to life. Miss W. and I sat out on the piazza with oleanders and magnolias around us, and enjoyed this affluence of nature. Tall aloes, the Yucca gloriosa, and many rare trees and plants, shone out verdantly from the little flower-beds of the garden which surround the lovely house. I enjoyed, besides this, her conversation, which is distinguished by its freshness and originality, its perfectly independent and earnest mode of feeling and judging. I again perceived that imprisoned fire which I had before seen glimmering in her clear, dark-brown eyes, diamond-like and still. It warmed me. We talked about Jane Eyre, and I for the first time heard any one openly express my own secret wishes with regard to Jane's behavior to Rochester. I love that virtue which is above conventional morality, and which knows something better than to be merely-free from blame.

But I ought to tell you the cause of the interruption in my letter yesterday. First it was the cold, and then it was the fire. I will explain. The day which succeeded that beautiful summer-day of which I have spoken was

wretched weather, so cold that it shook both soul and body, and made me so irritable and so out of humor, that I thanked my good fortune not to have slaves, and that I thus should not be excited to wreak my bad temper on them. Never, until I came into America, had I any experience of the power which the feelings of the body can have over the soul. God help the slave-owner and the slave in this variable climate, the penetrative atmosphere of which causes both body and soul to vibrate according to its temperature.

Well, I was frozen, but I had a fire in my large, handsome room. Octavia le V. came, and Mrs. G., for I had begun to sketch their portraits in my album, and they were to sit to me.

I enjoyed the contemplation and the drawing of these two amiable ladies, the noble, earnest, regular profile of Mrs. G., and the round, child-like, piquant countenance of Octavia le V., with its little turned-up nose, which I imagine resembles Cleopatra's, and its fantastic arrangement of the hair, the artistic labor of Betsy's hands. We were very comfortable; Mrs. G. sat before the fire, Octavia before me, and we were talking earnestly and cheerfully. about love, when a messenger came to Mrs. G. from her husband requesting her to send her keys. St. Charles's Hotel was on fire.

Mrs. G. could not be easy to remain; she knew that her husband and her children were at the burning hotel, and thither she hastened.

Octavia le V. had, before she came to me, given Betsy leave to go out, and had locked her room door. There was no one at the hotel who would take charge of her room or her effects. Her beautiful wardrobe, her casket containing several hundred dollars, destined to defray the expenses of her journey to Cuba, all would probably become the prey of the flames.

"Ah! it is quite certain every thing will be destroyed,"

said Octavia, and sat tranquilly before me, an image of unexampled equanimity. The heart which had bled with the deepest sorrow could not agitate itself by the loss of earthly possessions; the eye which had wept so long over a beloved brother and those dear children, had no tears for worldly adversity. I saw this evidently, while Octavia calmly reckoned up every thing which her room contained, and which would now be consumed. She said that early that morning she had seen a volume of black smoke issue from under her bed. She gave the alarm, and sent a message to the master of the hotel, who replied that there was no danger; that the smoke had merely found its way thither through a defect in one of the chimneyflues, and that all would soon be put to rights. An hour afterward smoke was again in the room; but it seemed perfectly to have subsided when she left the hotel.

I had seen so much of Betsy's precaution and alertness, as well as affection for her mistress, that I could not but hope for and rely upon her help on this occasion.

"She will soon," said I, "hear of the fire, and then she will immediately hasten to the place, and find some means of saving your property."

"She will not hear of it," a long way out of the city.

said Octavia; "she has gone

The hotel
The hotel is built of wood,

and the fire will consume it in a few hours; besides, I am certain that the fire has broke out near my room.

no! all the things will be destroyed."

Oh,

The loss seemed as nothing to Octavia. She was much more uneasy on account of the distress which her husband and her mother would feel if they should hear of the circumstance before she wrote.

In the mean time, as hour after hour went on, and we received no tidings either from Betsy or from St. Charles's, Octavia determined to go to one of her friends, who dwelt not far from the great hotel, that she might there gain some information, or even still go to the place itself.

When she had been gone about an hour, there was a hasty ring at the gate which leads from the garden into the street. I recognized Betsy, and rushed down to speak to her.

"How is it, Betsy?" cried I.

"All safe!" said she, so out of breath that she could hardly speak, but with a beaming countenance. "I have all the money with me!" and she laid her hand upon her breast. "Where is my Missis?"

"I believe that she is gone to St. Charles's," said I."There is no longer a St. Charles's," said Betsy. "It is burned to the ground!"

And so it was. In less than three hours' time that splendid building was a heap of ashes, and its population of nearly four hundred persons were houseless.

I went out with Betsy to seek for Mrs. Le V.

On our way, that faithful creature told me how the rumor of the fire had reached her, how she had hastened to the hotel, how one of the gentlemen there, a friend of Mrs. Le V., had broken open the door of her room, and how he and Betsy had saved all Octavia's property. Not an article was lost. Betsy told me still more as we went along, of how much she loved her mistress; of how she might have been married more than once, and how there was still a free man in the North who would gladly have her, but she could not think of leaving Mrs. Le V. "She was so fond of her, she should never leave her."

But who would not be fond of Octavia?

When we reached the residence of Mrs. Le V.'s friend, we found that she had been taken thence to a small hotel in the neighborhood of St. Charles, and thither Betsy hastened to seek for her.

With the thought of Mrs. G. I went to the scene of conflagration, in the hope of hearing some tidings of her there, and was fortunate enough, when near the place, to meet her eldest son, and to hear from him that she, his