226 Reminiscences of 



over by streets and rows of buildings. Here congre- 

 gated on favorable days many young people for amuse- 

 ment, and many merry occasions we had there. 



Among those frequently there was Miss Carroll, 

 one of the most accomplished female skaters I ever 

 saw, who elicited much admiration for her grace and 

 agility, and whose attractiveness and buoyant man- 

 ners brought many admirers. I was not long in mak- 

 ing her acquaintance through some of my friends, one 

 of whom was much smitten with her, but who made lit- 

 tle progress in creating a reciprocal interest. Miss Carroll 

 was not of the retiring cast, having a free and pleasant 

 word for all her friends, and was in no wise backward 

 in accepting presents of skates and various articles 

 from her admirers, and I had the pleasure of presenting 

 her with a pair of steel runners of recent improvement. 

 Nature had endowed her with more than her skating 

 accomplishment and beauty, as she had a voice of re- 

 markable sweetness and power, and, as was afterwards 

 shown, a remarkable faculty of application and mental 

 ability, and with much ambition. She married soon a 

 gentleman of wealth and removed to New York, where 

 she became the mother of several children and occupied 

 a prominent, though not generally accepted, position 

 in society, and I attended several entertainments at 

 her house there. 



After seven or eight years' residence in New York 

 she became estranged from her husband, occasioned, as 

 reports go, from his improper treatment, and took up 

 her abode in Paris with her children, occupying a 

 prominent chateau on one of the principal boulevards, 

 and I saw her there in 1867. Her entertainments were 

 conspicuous in American as well as French society, and 



