Social life in old New Orleans: Being recollections of my girlhood

“Children should be seen and not heard.” Children were neither seen nor heard in the days of which I write, the days of 1840. They led the simple life, going and coming in their own unobtrusive way, making no stir in fashionable circles, with laces and flounces and feathered hats. There were no ready-made garments then for grown-ups, much less for children. It was before California gold mines, before the Mexican war, before money was so abundant that we children could turn up our little nos...