FOOTNOTES:
[2] Possibly this word is "Election."
CHAPTER III
SCHOOL-DAYS AND EARLY FRIENDS
I must return to my school days. After several years spent at Miss Forbes's my parents decided to afford me greater advantages for study, and especially for becoming more proficient in the French language, and I was accordingly sent to Madame Eloise Chegaray's institution, which for many years was regarded as the most prominent girls' school in the country. It was a large establishment located on the corner of Houston and Mulberry Streets, where she accommodated boarding pupils as well as day scholars. Many years later this building was sold to the religious order of the Sacre Coeur. The school hours were from nine until three, with an intermission at twelve o'clock. The vacation, as at Miss Forbes's, was limited to the month of August. The discipline was not so rigid as at Miss Forbes's, as Madame Chegaray, who, by the way, taught her pupils to address her as Tante, governed almost entirely by affection. She possessed unusual grace of manner and great kindness of heart, and her few surviving pupils hold her name and memory in the highest esteem. Her early history is of exceptional interest. She was a daughter of Pierre Prosper Désabaye, and came with her father and the other members of his family from Paris to New York on account of his straitened circumstances, caused by an insurrection in San Domingo, where his family owned large estates. Madame Chegaray commenced as a mere girl to teach French in a school in New Brunswick, New Jersey, kept by Miss Sophie Hay, and was retained on account of the extreme purity of her accent.
I chance to have in my possession Madame Chegaray's own account of her early struggles after leaving Miss Hay, from which I take great pleasure in quoting:
Among the royal émigrés to this country was the Countess de St. Memin who kept a school. As my brother Marc had removed to New York we joined him and I was employed as French governess in the school of Mademoiselle de St. Memin. But I still knew nothing but to speak my own native tongue. One day I was bewailing my ignorance in the presence of M. Felix de Beaujour, Consul General of France to this country.
"Mlle. Eloise," he said, "quand on sait lire on peut toujours s'istruire."