After such pleasant school-days at home we were sent away to a fashionable boarding-school in the city of Richmond, presided over by a lady of great dignity and gentleness of manner, combined with high attainments. She was first Mrs. Otis of Boston, and afterward Mrs. Meade of Virginia. At her school were collected many interesting teachers and pupils. Among the former were Miss Prescott of Boston and Miss Willis, sister of N. P. Willis, both lovable and attractive. Among the noted girls at Mrs. Meade's school was Amélie Rives[20] of Albemarle County, Va. She spoke French fluently, and seemed to know much about Paris and the French court, her father having been Minister to France. [20] This interesting girl married Mr. Sigourney of Massachusetts, and after the war, as she was crossing the ocean to Europe with her husband and all her children (except one son) the ill-fated ship sank with nearly all on board. We have heard that, as the ship was going down, Amélie, her husband, and her children formed a circle, hand in hand, and were thus buried in the deep. We looked upon Amélie with great admiration, and, as she wrote very pretty poetry, every girl in the school set her heart upon having some original verses in her album, a favor which Amélie never refused. Closing this chapter on schools suggests the great difference in the objects and methods of a Virginia girl's education then and now. At that period a girl was expected not only to be an ornament to the drawing-room, but to be also equipped for taking charge of an establishment and superintending every detail of domestic employment on a plantation--the weaving, knitting, sewing, etc.--for the comfort of the negro servants to be some day under her care. I have thus seen girls laboriously draw the threads of finest linen, and backstitch miles of stitching on their brothers' collars and shirt-bosoms. Having no brothers to sew for, I looked on in amazement at this dreary task, and I have since often wished that those persevering and devoted women could come back and live their lives over again in the days of sewing-machines. At that day the parents of a girl would have shuddered at the thought of her venturing for a day's journey without an escort on a railway car, being jostled in a public crowd, or exposed in any way to indiscriminate contact with the outside world, while the proposition of a collegiate course for a woman would have shocked every sensibility of the opposite sex.