resources, and passing through the perplexities of change and misfortune, will grow away from the old regime, and may perhaps lose many of their virtues with too few of their faults.

During the late civil war, she suffered in common with the people of the South, losing much of her valuable property, but was fortunately left with sufficient means to enable her to live in her usual style of comfort. Her sympathies were with the section of country in which she was reared, but her conduct was throughout befitting her station, and no expression or action of hers is a reflection of aught save refined bearing and high-toned sensibility.

Surrounded with comforts and luxuries, and enjoying the companionship of her relatives and friends, Mrs. Polk glides calmly down the vale of years, with the memory of a past all brightness, and the hopes of a future all peace. The lifetime imitation of a pure and useful standard of excellence has rewarded her with a glorious fame, and she dwells among the friends of her youth, honored and respected, trusted and beloved.

MARGARET TAYLOR.

THE importance attached to Presidential honors is not in our country the inheritance of persons born to the wearing of them. Monarchial governments, by tradition and law, designate not only who is the "chief magistrate," but also provide candidates in advance for the succession. People, therefore, born to such high estate are always, from infancy onward, objects of world-wide interest; and the minutest acts of their lives, before they achieve their inherited position as well as after, are subjects of note from a thousand pens.

In our own country the popular will selects its candidates for the highest office within its gift as often from those who have suddenly received popularity as from those who have, by antecedent history, become known to fame. It is probably true that, just before the breaking out of actual hostilities between this country and Mexico, there was no military officer-his long and faithful public service considered-who was as little known to the country at large as General Taylor.

That the future Mistress of the White House who was buried in the seclusion of his retired private life, should be little known out of her domestic circle, is therefore not surprising; and that a family, the members of which had always courted seclusion and were satisfied

with making perfect the narrow circle of their accepted duties, should shrink from publicity and notice, is not to be wondered at; and, as a consequence, there is but little left to afford material for the pen of the historian.

Mrs. Taylor and her daughter "Betty," who for a while shone forth as the acknowledged "first ladies of the land," never sympathized with the display and bustle of the White House, and they always performed such official duties as were imperatively forced upon them, by their exalted position, as a task that had no compensation for the sacrifices attending it.

The key to Mrs. Taylor's life was touched by General Taylor himself, who, when receiving from an appointed speaker, at Baton Rouge, the official announcement that he was elected President of the United States, among other things said:

"For more than a quarter of a century, my house has been the tent, and my home the battle-field." This statement, which might have been used with propriety as figurative language by any officer who had been for more than a quarter of a century on active duty, was literally true of General Taylor's experience. He was emphatically a hard-working officer: either from choice or accident, his public life was never varied by those terms of "official repose" which give officers a rest at Washington, at West Point, or at head-quarters in some large city.

On the contrary, General Taylor, from the time he entered the army as a lieutenant until he laid aside his

LIFE ON THE FRONTIER.

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well-earned commission as a Major-General to assume the highest responsibility of Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, had never been out of what might be termed the severest frontier duties.

He was known as having acquired the largest experience as an Indian fighter. He was alike the hero of the "Black Hawk," as he was the most prominent officer in the Seminole war. Hence it is that Mrs. Taylor, more than any other mistress of the White House, had seen more army service, and passed through more varied frontier experiences; for she would never. under any circumstances, if she could avoid it, separate herself from her husband, no matter how severe were the trials resulting from wifely devotion.

This heroic spirit, that gives such grace and beauty to useful qualities, carried her cheerfully to Tampa Bay, that she might be near her husband when he was endeavoring to suppress the wily Seminoles in the swamps and everglades of Florida; and as the long previous years in the western country made her familiar with the attributes of savage triumphs, so the final defeats that eventually secured our settlers a peaceful home on the rich plains of Mexico, and laid the foundation of the prosperity of the great West.

In all this quarter of a century so feelingly alluded to by General Taylor, as the time when his house was a tent and his home the battle-field, it was seldom that Mrs. Taylor was not at his side, bearing her share of the hardships incidental to her husband's life, and cheerfully attending to

the duties which fell to her to perform. All this while the modest accommodations were acceptable, the log-cabin in winter, the tent if necessary in summer, with the coarse but substantial food of the soldiers, and often even this not in abundance. Deprived of the little elegancies which are so necessary for a woman's comfort-separated from the society of her children, who were almost always away at school-nothing stood in the way of her fealty to her husband, and she was content thus to live.

Through all these trying circumstances Mrs. Taylor, by her good sense, her modesty, her uncomplaining spirit, her faculty of adding to the comforts and surroundings of her husband's life, filled the measure of her duty, and set an example of the true woman, especially a soldier's wife, that her sex for all time can admire and point to as worthy of imitation.

Her domestic duties, so far as they related to the comfort of her family, she would never intentionally abandon for a single day to menial hands. Especially was she careful in the preparation of the food for the table, and however simple the meal might be, she saw that the material was carefully prepared. And this home training General Taylor displayed when in Northern Mexico, away from his domestic care; for while he was indifferent to a degree about luxuries, yet what he did eat, he persisted in having carefully selected and prepared with due regard to healthfulness; and his tent was ever a model of neatness and rude comfort.

Mrs. Taylor's maiden name was Margaret Smith. She