FLORIAN - The Most Traveled Man on Earth

commerce and it seems to me also that all his views and ideas are directed entirely toward
that, and he would never be inclined to become a planter.
I await with great impatience a reply from some of you, my dear friends, to my first letter
from New York. I hope again that they will bring me something consoling and that we
can again resume our old plans. Moreover, I see with great pleasure that there is no
doubt that a school, on a plan such as you, beloved, and my dear children are
maintaining, would succeed here beyond all expectation. <strong>The</strong> taste for art is growing.
For the last year or two Madam Labat has been teaching piano and harp, at two piasters a
lesson. She often gives concerts for money. She has 20 to 30 female students. <strong>The</strong>y say
she is good, I haven’t heard her. I saw in a newspaper that she had played the famous
piece by Starfelt [?], called L’Orage.[<strong>The</strong> Storm]. Laura would be able to do this as well.
Also they like singing [p 2] reommend very particularly to Laura. Above all, and your
sisters, to ____ _____ as fine as you can in the right manner of singing. <strong>The</strong>y don’t do it
here. But they know enough to understand price and taste. Emmanuel has a very nice
voice and sings with expression. You will do very well to bring with you plenty of music
to sell, but choose pieces that you would like to teach to your students in your pension,
and try to buy them when you come across them. <strong>The</strong>re is a store in London where they
sell it at very low prices, in the passageway of the Great Turnstile, Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
Bringing together that talent that you have with that of your daughters, everyone will be
in hurry to bring students to you. Everybody is clamoring for nice schools, and the young
ladies lament that they have received it [a good education]. Besides, you will enjoy along
with nice profits the most pleasant existence of society.
I went yesterday to a public ball. <strong>The</strong>y are numerous. <strong>The</strong>y danced 10 quadrilles at a
time. <strong>The</strong>y assured me however that frequently there are double that many. All the
same, there are two public balls or galas, a subscription ball, a public concert, and 3 or 4
society balls a week. <strong>The</strong>ater (spectacals) every day. <strong>The</strong> do little French Opera
Comique very nicely. I did not dance at all, and became bored in the role of observer. In
general, I don’t find the women pretty. I’ve seen only a very small number that deserve
that word, and not yet one that I could call beautiful. <strong>The</strong>y dance so-so. <strong>The</strong> prettiest
woman of the country, to my way of thinking, are Miss Le Blanc and her young sister
Mrs. Lyndgrace [?]: grace, the best taste, a delicate and playful spirit – in sum, everything
that pleases. It’s a pity that Miss B is 27 years old and beginning to fade. On seeing her
you would wish that you could see her eternally the same.
I haven’t seen the mother of Miss Ravencamp at all. She lives at Bayou Sara, about 50
leagues above New Orleans. If I had known that when I was in Natchez, I would have
stopped at her place when coming down the river. Bayou Sara is a very lovely country –
high ground, hills, streams for turning windmills [waterwheels?]. From there until below
Baton Rouge you see superb views, but that country still belongs to the Spaniards. I was
very much surprised to see that nation possesses a stretch of land of about 50 leagues
along the banks of the Mississippi, from near Fort Adams to Bayou Marchac, or Bienville
River (see the description of Louisiana).
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