Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 March 1887 — Ways of the Acadians. [ARTICLE]

Ways of the Acadians.

Tho Aoadians are fofid of their homes, says Charles Dudley Warner in Harper’s Magazine. It is not the fashion for the young people to go away to .bettor their condition. Few young men have ever been as far from homo as New Orleans; they marry young and settle down near the homestead. Mr. Lee Blanc has a colony of the descendants about him, within bail 'of his door. It must be large, and his race must be prolific, judging by the number of small children 'who gathered at the homestead to have a sly peep at the strangers. They took small interest in the war, and it had few attractions for them. The conscription carried awaj many of their young men, but I am told they did not make very good soldiers, not because they were not stalwart and brave, but because they were so intolerably homesick that they deserted whenever they had a chance. The men whom we saw were most of them fine athletic fellows, with honest, dark, sun-browned faces; eome of tho Children were very pretty, but tho women usually showed tlie effects of isolation and toil, and had tho common plainness of French peasants. They are a self-supporting community, raise their own cotton, corn and BUgar, and for the most part manufacture their own clothes and articles of household use. Some of the cotton jeans, striped with blue, indigo-dyed, made into garments for men and women, and the blankets, plain and yellow (from tho native nankeen cotton), curiously clouded, are very pretty and serviceable. Further than that their habits of living are simple apd their ways primitive. I saw few eccentricities. The peculiarity of this community is in its freedom from all the hurry and worry and irritation of our modern life. I have read that the gallants train their little horses to prance and curvet, and rear and fidget about, and that these are called “courtin’ horses," and are used when a young man goes courting, to impress his mistress wit¥ His manly horsemanship. I have seen these horses perform under the saddle, but I was not so fortunate as to see any courting going on. The ancient Jews required everybody to learn a trade, says the New Orleans Picayune. St. Fanl, though one of the most learned men of h's nation, was a tent maker. It was a good rule, because it prepared every man for actual service to society, and placed him in a manner beyond the vie ssitudes of fortune. We believe it would be a still better rule if adopted in the education of both sexes. A girl can learn stenography and photography in the time now spent, and often more than wasted, over the piano. A boy with some talent for that sort of work may, without being a great artist, learn the practical art of engraving, an art which is now brought into requisition by nearly all the trades, and which is of peculiar value to the advertiser. And, after all, it is better to be a self-sup-porting mechanic than a briefless lawyer or a hungry doctor. “If misfortune comes to a man’s door what is he to do?” asked one friend of another. “Treat it pleasantly,” was the reply; “and it will pass on; it can’t abide agreeable company.”