“Thus while Judge Reeves’s law school attracted the young men from all quarters, the town was radiant with blooming maidens both indigenous and from abroad. “Miss Pierce had a great admiration of the English classics and inspired her pupils with the same. She was a good reader, and often quoted or read long passages of poetry, and sometimes required her pupils to commit to memory choice selections. Her daily counsels were interspersed with quotations from English classics. Even the rules of her school, read aloud every Saturday, were rounded off in Johnsonian periods, which the roguish girls sometimes would most irreverently burlesque. “Her great hobby was _exercise for health_ in which she set her example by a morning and evening walk, exhorting her pupils to the same. In consequence every pleasant evening witnessed troops of young people passing and repassing through the broad and shaded street to and from the favorite Prospect Hill. Of course the fashion extended to the law students, and thus romances in real life abounded on every side. Multitudes of fathers and mothers in this nation have narrated to their children these evening strolls as the time when their mutual attachment began. “Miss Pierce had a quiet relish for humor and fun that made her very lenient towards one who was never any special credit to her as a pupil. There was one custom in Puritan New England at that day which was a curious contrast to other points of strictness and that was to close a school term with a dramatic exhibition. Miss Pierce not only patronized this, but wrote several very respectable dramas herself for such occasions in her school, and when the time approached, all other school duties were intermitted. A stage was erected, scenery was painted and hung in true theatre style, while all wardrobes of the community were ransacked for stage dresses.” His daughter, Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, writes:[44] “Compositions of a graver cast, romantic or poetic, were also much in vogue in the literary coteries of Litchfield. The history and antiquities of the Bantam Indians formed the themes of several ballads and poetical effusions, one of which by Miss Catharine Beecher, and two by the head teacher of the Female Academy, Mr. John P. Brace, were in the mouths and memories of many persons. “The poetic compositions of this gentleman were constantly circulating among the young ladies of his school and the literati of the place, and there was a peculiar freshness of enjoyment and excitement in this species of native unpublished literature.