ys by Voltaire. During the service someone in a near pew observed the
author's name upon the book, and forthwith the Morristown populace was
startled to hear that among Madame Chegaray's pupils was a follower of
the noted infidel. It took some time to convince the public that this
book was carried to church by my schoolmate without her teacher's
knowledge; and the girl was horrified to learn that she was
unintentionally to blame for a new local scandal. While I was at Madame
Chegaray's I owned a schoolbook entitled "Shelley, Coleridge and Keats."
I brought it home with me one day, but my father took it away from me
and, as I learned later, burned it, owing to his detestation of
Shelley's moral character. On one occasion he quoted in court some
extracts from Shelley as illustrative of the poet's character, but I
cannot recall the passage.

After two years spent in Madison, Madame Chegaray returned to New York
and reopened her school on the corner of Union Square and Fifteenth
Street in three houses built for her by Samuel B. Ruggles. At that time
the omnibuses had been running only to Fourteenth Street, but, out of
courtesy to this noble woman, their route was extended to Fifteenth
Street, where a lamp for the same reason was placed by the city. Madame
Chegaray taught here for many years, but finally moved to 78 Madison
Avenue, where she remained until, on account of old age, she was obliged
to give up her teaching.

While I was still attending Madame Chegaray's school, my father, under
the impression that I was not quite as proficient in mathematics and
astronomy as it was his desire and ambition that I should be, employed
Professor Robert Adrian of Columbia College to give me private
instruction in my own home. Under his able tuition, I particularly
enjoyed traversing the firmament. I was always faithful to the planet
Venus, whose beauty was to me then, as now, a constant delight. In those
youthful days my proprietorship in this heavenly body seemed to me as
well established as in a Fifth Avenue lot, and was quite as tangible. I
regarded myself in the light of an individual proprietor, and, like
Alexander Selkirk in his far away island of the sea, my right to this
celestial domain there was none to dispute.

After the flight of so many years, and in view, also, of the fact that
sometimes the world seems to us older women to be almost turned upside
down, it may not be uninteresting to speak of some of the books which