In the phraseology of New England might be found many an old English
provincial phrase, long since obsolete in the parent country; with some
quaint relics of the roundheads; while Virginia cherishes peculiarities
characteristic of the days of Elizabeth and Sir Walter Raleigh.
In the same way the sturdy yeomanry of New Jersey and Pennsylvania keep up
many usages fading away in ancient Germany; while many an honest,
broad-bottomed custom, nearly extinct in venerable Holland, may be found
flourishing in pristine vigor and luxuriance in Dutch villages, on the
banks of the Mohawk and the Hudson.
In no part of our country, however, are the customs and peculiarities,
imported from the old world by the earlier settlers, kept up with more
fidelity than in the little, poverty-stricken villages of Spanish and
French origin, which border the rivers of ancient Louisiana. Their
population is generally made up of the descendants of those nations,
married and interwoven together, and occasionally crossed with a slight
dash of the Indian.
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