Daily Richmond Whig

Brazilian Courtship. While at dinner, a negro darkey who had attended us seemed fraught with some important intelligence, and continued to look mysteriously, grinning with his white teeth, and making signs which neither my companion nor I comprehended. We afterwards discovered, that it was connected with a curious trait of Brazilian manners. The old man and his wife had no children, so they sent for a brother's child to keep them company; and manage their family. This young lady was very comely: and having a prospect of a good inheritance from her uncle, she thought right to look out for some agreeable and worthy partner to share it with. My companion, possessing these requisites, had caught the eye of the fair Victorian; and not having an opportunity of speaking to him herself, had communicated, by means of the attendant slave, her partiality for him, and an intimation that, if he was actuated by similar sentiments, she would marry him, and share with him the inheritance she expected from her good uncle. This deviation from the established etiquette of European usage does not convey any imputation of want of delicacy on the part of the ladies. Victorina was as modest as she was comely: she sat in the remote part of the house with her aunt, superintending her domestic concerns, and seeming retiring and diffident, and not at all disposed to attract the admiration of any other person than him on whom she had fixed her affections.