necessary for your
spiritual life; in the other you have the epitome of all worldly
wisdom."

When I entered Madame Chegaray's school she had about a hundred pupils,
a large number of whom were from the Southern States. How well I
remember the extreme loyalty of the Southern girls to their native soil!
I can close my eyes and read the opening sentence of a composition
written by one of my comrades, Elodie Toutant, a sister of General
Pierre G. T. Beauregard of the Confederate Army--"The South, the South,
the beautiful South, the garden spot of the United States." This
chivalric devotion to the soil whence they sprang apparently was
literally breathed into my Southern school companions from the very
beginning of their lives. Their loyalty possessed a fascination for me,
and although I was born, reared and educated in a Northern State, I had
a tender feeling for the South, which still lingers with me, for most of
the friendships I formed at Madame Chegaray's were with Southern girls.

My first day at Madame Chegaray's, like many other beginnings, was
something of an ordeal, but it was my good fortune to meet almost
immediately Henrietta Croom, a daughter of Henry B. Croom, a celebrated
botanist of North Carolina, but who, with his family, had spent much of
his life in Tallahassee. Many are the pleasant hours we spent together,
but to my sorrow she graduated at an early age, and a few months later
embarked, in company with her parents, a younger brother and sister and
an aunt, Mrs. Cammack, upon a vessel called the _Home_ for Charleston,
South Carolina, where they had planned to make their future residence.
When they had been several days at sea their vessel encountered a severe
storm off Cape Hatteras, and after a brave struggle with the terrific
elements every member of the family sank with the ship within a few
miles of the spot where the Crooms had formerly lived. This occurred on
the 9th of October, 1836. They had as fellow voyagers a brother of
Madame Chegaray, who, with his wife and three children, had only just
left the school to make the voyage to Charleston. They, too, lost their
lives. Over Madame Chegaray's school as well as her household at once
hung a pall, and gloom and mourning prevailed on every side; indeed, the
whole city of New York shared in our sorrow. The newspapers of the day
were filled with accounts of this direful disaster, but there were few
survivors to tell the tale. My late playmate, Henrie