pure,
And help'd the youthful beauty to endure.
Her infant sports beneath the spreading lime,
Her recent school-days, in a northern clime--
Her gentle deeds--her treasur'd thoughts of love--
All plum'd her pinions for a flight above!

The Croom family owned large plantations in the South together with many
slaves. A short time after it was definitely known that not a member of
the family had survived, there was a legal contest over the estate by
the representatives of both sides of the household, the Crooms and the
Armisteads. Eminent members of the Southern bar were employed, among
whom were Judge John McPherson Berrien of Savannah and Joseph M. White
of Florida, often called "Florida White." After about twenty years of
litigation the suit was decided in favor of the Armisteads. It seems
that as young Croom, a lad of twelve, nearly reached the shore he was
regarded as the survivor, and his grandmother, Mrs. Henrietta Smith of
Newbern, North Carolina, his nearest living relative, became his heir. I
have always understood that this hotly contested case has since been
regarded as a judicial precedent.

A few days after receiving the news of the shipwreck of the _Home_, I
found by accident in my father's library an _edition de luxe_, just
published in London, of "Les Dames de Byron." In it was an illustration
entitled "Leila," which bore a wonderful resemblance to my best friend,
Henrietta Croom. Beneath were the following lines, which seemed to
suggest her history, and the coincidence was so apparent that I
immediately committed them to memory, and it is from memory that I now
give them:

She sleeps beneath the wandering wave;
Ah! had she but an earthly grave
This aching heart and throbbing breast
Would seek and share her narrow rest.
She was a form of life and light
That soon became a part of sight,
And rose where'er I turned mine eye--
The morning-star of memory.

Another schoolmate and friend of mine at Madame Chegaray's was Josephine
Habersham of Savannah, a daughter of Joseph Habersham and a
great-granddaughter of General Joseph Habersham, who succeeded Timothy
Pickering as Postmaster General during Washington's second term and
retained the position under Adams and Jefferson until the latter part of
1801. She was one of Madame Chegaray's star pupils in music. She
frequently made visits to my home, remaining over Saturday and Sunday,
and delighted the famil