There were some good students, no doubt, to uphold the reputation of well-established schools, though it was before the influence of Hannah Adams, the pioneer of a broader education for women, had been widely felt, and before that delicate balance between the mental and physical being of a girl student had ever been disturbed by over-study. With that "little learning," that was not "a dangerous thing" from the point of view of the women of that day, there were many with a mental sprightliness that was far more exhilarating than all their deep draughts from the Pierian spring had rendered a few such women as Hannah Adams. A disappointed man who once made a stage-coach journey with her related that she only opened her lips to enumerate the pieces of baggage with which she was encumbered, lest in her descent she should, in the preoccupation of her mind, leave behind her either her "great box, little box, or bandbox." [Illustration: Sallie Ward (Mrs. George F. Downs) From a miniature] Sallie Ward, in deference perhaps to the prejudices of her French origin, was sent to a school presided over by a woman of that nationality. She enlivened its atmosphere of conventional elegance by many startling ebullitions of her undisciplined young spirits, such as appearing unannounced in male attire at wholly inappropriate moments. Then, as everybody disappeared with more haste than dignity, her own uncontrollable laughter would reveal the truth of the situation. Some one would exclaim, "Sallie Ward!" and the others would troop back to admire her, for, if a little effeminate, she made, nevertheless, a very captivating youth, and no school-mistress could ever look into her beaming face and find it in her heart to be harsh to her. Her own mother attempted once when she was a very little child to punish her for some misdemeanor, but Sallie, divining her purpose, dropped quickly on her knees and raised her little hands in supplication. There seemed at that moment something so seraphic in her childish beauty that her mother afterwards admitted that her good intentions were involuntarily thwarted. Though the rod was always spared, she grew up to be none the less lovable, though a woman of the world in all things rather than a woman of the spirit,--the logical result of her environment.