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.
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.
How the men of that time would stand aghast to see the girl of the present day elbowing her way through a crowd, buying her ticket at the railway station, interviewing baggage-agents, checking trunks, and seating herself in the train to make a long journey alone, perhaps to enter some strange community and make her living by the practice of law or medicine, lecturing, teaching, telegraphing, newspaper-reporting, typewriting, bookkeeping, or in some other of the various avenues now open to women!
Whether the new system be any improvement upon the old remains open for discussion. It is certain that these widely opposed methods must result in wholly different types of feminine character.
CHAPTER XIX.
The scenes connected with the late war will recall to the mind of every Southern man and woman the name of Robert E. Lee—a name which will be loved and revered as long as home or fireside remains in old Virginia, and which sets the crowning glory on the list of illustrious men from plantation homes. Admiration and enthusiasm naturally belong to victory, but the man must be rare indeed who in defeat, like General Lee, receives the applause of his countrymen.