Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1887 | Page 8

the
school?"
"Can't tell you. She'll write to Olive and Bathsheba, and I'll find out all
about it."
Murray Bradshaw went home and wrote a long letter to Mrs. Clymer
Ketchum, of 24 Carat Place, containing many interesting remarks and
inquiries, some of the latter relating to Madam Delacoste's institution
for the education of young ladies.
* * * * *
While this was going on at Oxbow Village, Myrtle was establishing

herself at the rather fashionable school to which Mr. Gridley had
recommended her. Mrs. or Madam Delacoste's boarding-school had a
name which on the whole it deserved pretty well. She had some very
good instructors for girls who wished to get up useful knowledge in
case they might marry professors or ministers. They had a chance to
learn music, dancing, drawing, and the way of behaving in company.
There was a chance, too, to pick up available acquaintances, for many
rich people sent their daughters to the school, and it was something to
have been bred in their company.
There was the usual division of the scholars into a first and second set,
according to the social position, mainly depending upon the fortune, of
the families to which they belonged. The wholesale dealer's daughter
very naturally considered herself as belonging to a different order from
the retail dealer's daughter. The keeper of a great hotel and the editor of
a widely circulated newspaper were considered as ranking with the
wholesale dealers, and their daughters belonged also to the untitled
nobility which has the dollar for its armorial bearing. The second set
had most of the good scholars, and some of the prettiest girls; but
nobody knew anything about their families, who lived off the great
streets and avenues, or vegetated in country towns.
Myrtle Hazard's advent made something like a sensation. They did not
know exactly what to make of her. Hazard? Hazard? No great firm of
that name. No leading hotel kept by any Hazard, was there? No
newspaper of note edited by anybody called Hazard, was there? Came
from where? Oxbow Village. O, rural district. Yes.--Still they could not
help owning that she was handsome,--a concession which of course had
to be made with reservations.
"Don't you think she's vurry good-lookin'?" said a Boston girl to a New
York girl. "I think she's real pooty."
"I dew, indeed. I didn't think she was haäf so handsome the feeest time
I saw her," answered the New York girl.
"What a pity she hadn't been bawn in Bawston!"

"Yes, and moved very young to Ne Yock!"
"And married a sarsaparilla man, and lived in Fiff Avenoo, and moved
in the fust society."
"Better dew that than be strong-mainded, and dew your own cook'n,
and live in your own kitch'n."
"Don't forgit to send your card when you are Mrs. Old Dr. Jacob!"
"Indeed I shaän't. What's the name of the alley, and which bell?" The
New York girl took out a memorandum-book as if to put it down.
"Hadn't you better let me write it for you, dear?" said the Boston girl.
"It is as well to have it legible, you know."
"Take it," said the New York girl. "There's tew York shill'ns in it when
I hand it to you."
"Your whole quarter's allowance, I bullieve,--ain't it?" said the Boston
girl.
"Elegant manners, correct deportment, and propriety of language will
be strictly attended to in this institution. The most correct standards of
pronunciation will be inculcated by precept and example. It will be the
special aim of the teachers to educate their pupils out of all
provincialisms, so that they may be recognized as well-bred English
scholars wherever the language is spoken in its purity."--Extract from
the Prospectus of Madam Delacoste's Boarding-School.
Myrtle Hazard was a puzzle to all the girls. Striking, they all agreed,
but then the criticisms began. Many of the girls chattered a little broken
French, and one of them, Miss Euphrosyne De Lacy, had been half
educated in Paris, so that she had all the phrases which are to social
operators what his cutting instruments are to the surgeon. Her face she
allowed was handsome; but her style, according to this oracle, was a
little bourgeoise, and her air not exactly comme il faut. More
specifically, she was guilty of contours fortement prononcés,--corsage

de paysanne,--quelque chose de sauvage, etc., etc. This girl prided
herself on her figure.
Miss Bella Pool, (La Belle Poule as the demi-Parisian girl had
christened her,) the beauty of the school, did not think so much of
Myrtle's face, but considered her figure as better than the De Lacy
girl's.
The two sets, first and second, fought over her as the Greeks and
Trojans over a dead hero, or the Yale College societies over a live
freshman. She was nobody by her