Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1895 edition. Excerpt: ... THE CONVENT OF THE HOLY FAMILY. TT epitomizes a great section of the city's past, this -*- Convent of the Holy Family. And in no other place of the city do the heart and the mind seem to be working together so reverently to spell from its past indications for its future. And, it would seem, in no other place to the historian, sociologist, or may we simply say humanitarian, does the future appear, not so bright, not so purely hopeful, but so providentially directed as in this institution. It was on New Year's day, 1888, that the news spread through the community that the Mother Superior of the Coloured Convent of the Holy Family was dead. It was an occasion for the inquisitive to satisfy curiosity, as well as for the friends and well-wishers of the convent to pay the respect of a call; for those of the Catholic faith to do more. The body had not yet been transported to the chapel. She lay on the cot on which she had died a few hours before. Can one ever forget the sight? So small, so shrunken, so withered, such a mummy of a human figure, with a face, under the glitter of the burning candles, so yellow, wrinkled, sunken, so devitalized, so dehumanized, of all the elements of earthly passions. All around the bed were kneeling figures from the street, from the market, servants, beggars, sisters, orphans, and white ladies, the latter predominating, not by their number but by the elegance and distinction they cast over the assemblage. It was the time and the opportunity of all others to ask who was she, this Mother Juliette -- and what is this Convent of the Holy Family? During the ancien rSgime in Louisiana, the pureblooded African was never called coloured, but always negro. The gens de couleur, coloured people, were a class apart, separated...
