With her friends, Sally Chevalier and Sally Watson, Fanny Taylor was a pupil in the dancing academies of Mr. Xaupi and Mr. Boisseau. They excelled in the grace and beauty of their dancing, and at the Assembly balls it was their custom to occupy places in the same cotillon. They enjoyed the delicate celebrity of having pieces of dancing-music named after them, and when "Sally Chevalier," "Fanny Taylor," or "Sally Watson," was called for, Judah, Ruffin, and Lomax, those dusky magnates of the ball-room, brought forth the melody with an air that was their own peculiar tribute to the fair young queens. About the time she reached maturity, Fanny Taylor removed with her mother from Richmond to "Glenarron," the superb James River estate of her brother-in-law, Mr. William Galt. Shortly afterwards she returned to Richmond, where she spent a winter as the guest of her friends, Mr. and Mrs. Warwick. She became noted as the most beautiful woman in the Old Dominion. In a word, she was the belle of Richmond, which boasted the most delightful society in the South, and she would not have exchanged places with a princess of the royal house of England. Richmond of those days was too small for social divisions and subdivisions. There was but one set, and every one who went into society at all belonged to it. It was well established and conservative. Its traditions were ancient, and it tolerated no innovations. It had its calling hours from twelve till four, when its drawing-rooms were crowded with young men from the neighboring plantations, professional men, and legislators, on whose ears the tones of the Capitol bell announcing the opening of the session were wont to fall in vain. There were dancing-parties for young people, beginning at seven or eight in the evening, and dinner-parties for distinguished guests at four o'clock in the afternoon. The graceful art of carving formed an indispensable part of a gentleman's education, and a host gave tangible proof of his hospitality when from his end of the table he served his guests with his own hand, selecting the choice parts of a joint or fowl for the guest of honor. The ladies retired at the conclusion of dinner, leaving the gentlemen in possession of the table, being a custom of their English forefathers which their colonial antecedents had adhered to probably in the log-cabin days when there was a state occasion. There were no teas and no _débuts_. Girls never came out, because, as Thomas Nelson Page has said, "they had never been in." As soon as they were old enough to be out of the nursery they drifted naturally into the drawing-room, and there grew up in that social sphere which many of them were destined later to sway as queens.