Transcription: What is the state of society in New Orleans is one of the many questions which I am required to answer by a friend who seems not to be aware that this question is equivalent to that of Hamlet to Polonius. He might as well ask, what is the shape of a cloud? The state of society at any time here is puzzling. There are in fact three societies here, the French, the American, and the mixed. The French society is not exactly what it was at the change of government, and the American society is not strictly what it is in the Atlantic cities. Benjamin Henry Latrobe, January 1819
