CHAPTER II

THE FATE OF THE IMMIGRANT


It was just a fortnight after the ball, that one Joseph Frowenfeld
opened his eyes upon Louisiana. He was an American by birth, rearing and
sentiment, yet German enough through his parents, and the only son in a
family consisting of father, mother, self, and two sisters, new-blown
flowers of womanhood. It was an October dawn, when, long wearied of the
ocean, and with bright anticipations of verdure, and fragrance, and
tropical gorgeousness, this simple-hearted family awoke to find the bark
that had borne them from their far northern home already entering upon
the ascent of the Mississippi.

We may easily imagine the grave group, as they came up one by one from
below, that morning of first disappointment, and stood (with a whirligig
of jubilant mosquitoes spinning about each head) looking out across the
waste, seeing the sky and the marsh meet in the east, the north, and the
west, and receiving with patient silence the father's suggestion that
the hills would, no doubt, rise into view after a while.

"My children, we may turn this disappointment into a lesson; if the good
people of this country could speak to us now, they might well ask us not
to judge them or their land upon one or two hasty glances, or by the
experiences of a few short days or weeks."

But no hills rose. However, by and by they found solace in the
appearance of distant forest, and in the afternoon they entered a
land--but such a land! A land hung in mourning, darkened by gigantic