The home was detached, and surrounded by ample grounds; quantities of fig trees, thickets of running roses and in damp places clusters of palmetto and blooming flags. We little invited guests were promptly on the spot at 4 P. M., and as promptly off the spot at early candlelight. I am sure no débutantes ever had a better time than did we little girls in pantalettes and pigtails. We danced; Miss Sarah Strawbridge played for us, and we all knew how to dance. Didn’t we belong to Mme. Arraline Brooks’ dancing school?
The corner of Camp and Julia Streets, diagonally across from the then fashionable 13 Buildings, was occupied by Mme. Arraline Brooks, a teacher of dancing. Her school (studio or parlor it would be called now) was on the second floor of Armory Hall, and there we children—she had an immense class, too—learned all the fancy whirls and “heel and toe” steps of the intricate polka, which was danced in sets of eight, like old-time quadrilles. Mme. Arraline wore in the classroom short skirts and pantalettes, so we had a good sight of her feet as she pirouetted about, as agile as a ballet dancer.
By and by, at a signal from Miss Sarah, who had been having a confidential and persuasive interview with a little miss, we were all placed with our backs to the wall and a space cleared. Miss Sarah struck a few notes, and little Tenie Slocomb danced the “Highland fling.” Very beautiful was the little sylph in white muslin, her short sleeves tied with blue ribbons, and she so graceful and lovely. It comes to me to-day with a thrill, when I compare the companion picture—of a pale, delicate, dainty old lady, with silvered hair and tottering step, on the bank of a foreign river. It is not easy to bridge the seventy years (such a short span, too, it is) between the two. Then the march from “Norma” started us to the room for refreshments. It is full forty years since I have heard that old familiar air, but for thirty years after that date I did not hear it that the impulse to march to lemonade and sponge cake did not seize me.
Alack-a-day! Almost all of us have marched away.
II
NEW ORLEANS SCHOOLS AND TEACHERS IN THE FORTIES
Of course, seventy years ago, as in the ages past and to come, convents were the places for educating young girls in a Catholic community. Nevertheless, there have always been schools and schools, for those whom it was not expedient or convenient to board in a convent. In New Orleans the Ursuline Convent was too remote from the majority of homes for these day scholars, so there were a few schools among the many that come to my mind to-day, not that I ever entered one of them, but I had girl friends in all. In the thirties St. Angelo had a school on Customhouse Street, next door to the home of the Zacharies. His method of teaching may have been all right, but his discipline was objectionable; he had the delinquent pupils kneel on brickdust and tacks and there study aloud the neglected lesson. Now, brickdust isn’t so very bad, and tacks only a trifle worse, when one’s knees are protected by stockings or even pantalettes, but stockings in those days did not extend over the knee, and old St. Angelo was sure to see that the pantalettes were well rolled up. This method of discipline was not acceptable to parents whose children came home with bruises and wounds. That dominie retired from business before the forties.
Mme. Granet had a school for girls in the French municipality. Elinor Longer, one of my most intimate friends, attended it, and she used to tell us stories that convulsed us with laughter about Madame’s daughter. Lina had some eye trouble, and was forbidden to “exercise the tear glands,” but her tears flowed copiously when Madame refused to submit to her freaks. Thus Lina managed, in a way, to run the school, having half holidays and other indulgences so dear to the schoolgirl, at her own sweet will.
At the haunted house (I wonder if it is still standing and still haunted?) on Royal Street, Mme. Delarouelle had a school for demoiselles. Rosa, daughter of Judge John M. Duncan, was a scholar there. I don’t think the madame had any boarders, though the house was large and commodious, even if it was haunted by ghosts of maltreated negroes. The school could not under those circumstances have continued many years, for every child knew it was dangerous to cross its portals. Our John told me he “seed a skel’ton hand” clutching the grated front door once, and he never walked on that side of the street thereafter. He even knew a man “dat seen eyes widout sockets or sockets widout eyes, he dun know which, but dey could see, all de same, and they was a looken out’en one of the upstairs winders.” With such gruesome talk many a child was put to bed in my young days.
Doctor, afterward Bishop Hawks, when he was rector of Christ Church, then on Canal Street, had a school on Girod Street. It was a temporary affair and did not continue over a season or two. It was entirely conducted by Mrs. Hawks and her daughters, so far as I know, for, as before mentioned, I attended none of the schools.