sometimes
brought slaves who had continued faithful, and who retained their
serfdom under the laws of Delaware. The French _bonnes_ stood on
washing-benches in the Brandywine, and taught the amazed Quaker wives
that laundry-work could be done in cold water. The names of grand old
French families, prefaced by the proprietarial forms of _le_ and _du_,
became mixed by marriage with such Swedish names as Svensson and such
Dutch names as Staelkappe. (The first Staelkappe was a ship's cook,
nicknamed from his oily and glossy bonnet.) As for the refugees from
Santo Domingo, they absolutely invaded Wilmington, so that the price of
butter and eggs was just doubled in 1791, and house-rents rose in
proportion. They found themselves with rapture where the hills were rosy
with peach-blossoms, and where every summer was simply an extract from
Paradise.

We cannot linger, as we fain would do, over the quaint and amusing
_Paris en Amerique_ which reigned here for a period following the events
of '93. At Sixth and French streets lived a marchioness in a cot, which
she adorned with the manners of Versailles, the temper of the Faubourg
St. Germain and the pride of Lucifer. This Marquise de Sourci was
maintained by her son, who made pretty boxes of gourds, and afterward
boats, in one of which he was subsequently wrecked on the Delaware,
before the young marquis was of age to claim his title. In a farm-house,
whose rooms he lined with painted canvas, lived Colonel de Tousard. On
Long Hook Farm resided, in honor and comfort, Major Pierre Jaquette, son
of a Huguenot refugee who married a Swedish girl, and became a Methodist
after one of Whitefield's orations: as for the son, he served in
thirty-two pitched battles during our Revolution. Good Joseph Isambrie,
the blacksmith, used to tell in provincial French the story of his
service with Bonaparte in Egypt, while his wife blew the forge-bellows.
_Le Docteur_ Bayard, a rich physician, cured his compatriots for
nothing, and Doctor Capelle, one of Louis XVI.'s army-surgeons, set
their poor homesick old bones for them when necessary. Monsieur
Bergerac, afterward professor in St. Mary's College, Baltimore, was a
teacher: another preceptor, M. Michel Martel, an _emigre_ of 1780, was
proficient in fifteen languages, five of which he had imparted to the
lovely and talented Theodosia Burr. Aaron Burr happened to visit
Wilmington when the man who had trained his daughter's intellect was
lying in the al