inability to rise to the action of high motive in a time when every true soul in the nation seemed to be impelled to unselfish deeds for its rescue. She was incapable of lofty, impersonal impulse. She was self-centred, and never in any experience rose above herself. According to circumstance, her own ambitions, her own pleasures, her own sufferings, made the sensation which absorbed and consumed every other. As a President's wife she could not rise above the level of her nature, and it was her misfortune that she never even approached the bound of her opportunity.

CHAPTER XXV.

THE WHITE HOUSE NOW-ITS PRESENT OCCUPANTS.

After the War-The Home of President Johnson-Shut Up in the Mountains Two Years of Exile-A Contrast-Suffering for their CountrySecretly Burying the Dead-A Wife of Seventeen Years-Midnight Studies-Broken Down-A Party of Grandchildren-" My Dears, I am an Invalid ”—“ God's Best Gift to Man "-The Woman Who Taught the President-A "Lady of Benign Countenance"-Doing the Honors at the White Ilouse-"We are Plain People "-The East Room Filled with Vermin-Traces of the Soldiers-A State of Dirt and Ruin-Mrs. Patterson's Calico Dress-In the Dairy-A Nineteenth Century Wonder ---How the Old Carpets were Patched-The Greenbacks are Forthcoming -How $30,000 were Spent-Buying the Furniture-Working in Hot Weather-" Wrestling with Rags and Ruins "—" Renovated from Top to Bottom "What the Ladies Wore, and What They Didn't-The Mem- . ory of Elegant Attire-Impressing the Public Mind-Ilow Unperverted Minds are Affected--" Bare-necked Dowagers-" A Large Crowd of Bare Busts"-Elderly Ladies with Raven Locks-The Opinion of a Woman of Fashion-Very Good Dinners-Obsequious to the Will of "the People"-Doors Open to the Mob-Sketching a Banquet-Sentimental Reflections on the Dining Room-The Portraits of the Presidents -The Impeachment Trial-Peace in the Family-The Grant DynastyLooking Home-like-Mrs. Grant at Home-What Might Be Done, ifWhat Won't Work a Reformation-A Pity for Miss Nellie Grant-How She Suddenly "Came Out ""A Full Fledged Woman of Fashion "A "Shoal of Pretty Girls "-How a Certain Young Lady was SpoiltBrushing Away "the Dew of Innocence "-Need of a Centripetal Soul -Society in the Season-Rare Women with no Tastes-The Wives of the Presidents Summed Up.

MRS.

RS. LINCOLN was succeeded in the White House by three women, who entered its portals through the fiery baptism of suffering for their country's sake.

While President Johnson was performing his duties as Senator in Washington, his family were shut up in the mountains of East Tennessee, where the ravages of war were most dreadful. For more than two years he was unable to set eyes on either wife or child. While many of the mushroom aristocracy, who afterwards looked upon them so superciliously, were coining their ill-gotten dollars out of the blood of their country, these brave, loyal women were being "hunted from point to point, driven to seek refuge in the wilderness, forced to subsist on coarse and insufficient food, and more than once called to bury with secret and stolen sepulture those whom they loved, murdered because they would not join in deeds of odious treason to union and liberty."

President Johnson's youngest daughter entered the White House a widow, recently bereaved of her husband, who fell a soldier in the Union cause. His wife, who at seventeen was his teacher, when "in the silent watches of the night the youthful couple studied together," when their weary tasks were done, came to the White House broken in health and spirits, through the suffering and bereavements through which she had passed. She was never seen but on one public occasion at the White House, that of a children's party, given to her grandchildren. At that time she was seated in one of the republican court-chairs of satin and ebony. She did not rise when the children or guests were presented, but simply said, "My dears, I am an 'My dears, I am an invalid," and her sad, pale face and sunken eyes proved the expression. She is an invalid now; but an observer would say, contemplating her, "A noble woman, God's best gift to man." It was that woman who taught the President, after she

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became his wife; and in all their early years she was his assistant counsellor and guide.

Liable to be arrested for the slightest offense; ofttimes insulted by the rabble, Mrs. Johnson performed the perilous journey from Greenville to Nashville. Few who were not actual participators in the civil war can form an estimate of the trials of this noble woman. Invalid, as she was, she yet endured exposure and anxiety, and passed through the extended lines of hostile armies, never uttering a hasty word, or, by her looks, betraying in the least degree her harrowed feelings. She is remembered by friend and foe as a lady of benign countenance and sweet and winning manners.

During her husband's administration, the heavy duties and dubious honors of the White House were performed by her oldest daughter, Martha Patterson, the wife of Senator Patterson of Tennessee. That lady's utterance, soon after entering the White House, was a key to her character, yet scarcely a promise of her own distinguished management of the President's house. She said: "We are plain people from the mountains of Tennessee, called here for a short time by a national calamity. I trust too much will not be expected of us." The career of Mrs. Lincoln had chilled the people to expect little from the feminine administrator of the White Ilouse; but from Martha Patterson they received much, and that of the most unobtrusive and noble service. .

The family of the new President arrived in June. Here was a new field entirely for the diffident woman who was compelled to do the honors, in lieu of her mother-a confirmed invalid. The house looked anything but inviting. Soldiers had wandered unchallenged through

the entire suites of parlors. The East Room, dirty and soiled, was filled with vermin. Guards had slept upon the sofas and carpets till they were ruined, and the immense crowds who, during the preceding years of war, filled the President's house continually had worn out the already ancient furniture. No sign of neatness or comfort greeted their appearance, but evidences of neglect and decay everywhere met their eyes. To put aside all ceremony and work incessantly, was the portion of Mrs. Patterson from the beginning. It was her practice to rise very early, don a calico dress and spotless apron, and then descend to skim the milk and attend to the dairy before breakfast. Remembering this fact, of a President's daughter, in the President's house, in the nineteenth century, for a brief moment, let us cease to bemoan the homely virtues of our grandmothers as forever dead and buried.

At the first reception of President Johnson, held January 1, 1866, the White House had not been renovated. Dingy and destitute of ornament Martha Patterson had by dint of covering its old carpets with pure linen, and hiding its wounds with fresh flowers, and letting her beautiful children loose in its rooms, given it an aspect of purity, beauty and cheer, to which it had long been a stranger.

In the spring, Congress appropriated thirty thousand dollars to the renovation of the White House. After consulting various firms, Mrs. Patterson found that it would take the whole amount to furnish simply the parlors. Feeling a personal responsibility to the government for the expenditure of the money, unlike her predecessor, she determined not to surpass it. She made herself its