Y WEBB HAYES

host, widely known and
wife the country a

in the administration

her influence was me
ccessful career as

od the future possib

ions and conditions.

un eraand was the first House of the third perio Tonary period of Americo its of character than me re was necessity for lug urage, heroism and forty i every emergency The

HOSTESS OF THE WHITE HOUSE.

629

and were content to acquire it. Some were too little used to the world to care for even this, and led retired domestic lives, wholly apart from the public careers of their husbands.

Mrs. Hayes is the product of the last half of the nineteenth century, and in her strong, healthful influence gives the world assurance of what the next century women will be. Her life, for many years, was spent before the public, and she so fully identified herself with her husband's administration that it can never be remembered apart from her. She gave her every thought to the maintenance and advancement of her husband's fame and name as the Chief Magistrate of the United States; she deemed no act, however insignificant of itself, too slight to be considered unimportant if, in its results, it could add to his renown.

In no one particular did she

so ably display her strength of character as in commanding, by her strict adherence to her domestic duties, the recognition due her for her able performance of the responsibility devolving upon her as the counsellor and friend of the President. Mrs. Hayes went to the White House prepared through her happy married life, through her winsome, cheerful spirit; through her long experience in official circles; through her intelligence and culture, and her social rank and attributes, to fill the highest place a woman can occupy in a Republic. Through her husband the dignified place she filled was hers, and in the daily performance of the pleasant duties of hostess of the Executive Mansion she thought of his

honor first. In the results attained by her was again exemplified the truth of the old adage that we cannot rightly help others without helping ourselves. She, in lending additional strength to her husband's administration, commanded increased respect for her sex. She gave the world a fair example of the power for good which a woman of fine breeding and social opportunities can exercise. Mrs. Hayes called forth, through her successful efforts in placing herself beside her husband in his official rank, a more just appreciation of her womanhood and a higher reverence for the relations of wifehood and motherhood. This service, though it has not been generally recognized as such, is perhaps the greatest she could have done the world. The assertion will be endorsed when the fact, which cannot be controverted, is recognized, that great men in this country have not always been fortunate in being wedded to representative women. From the time of Franklin down to the era of Henry Clay, and even more recently, the wives of many of the leading public men of the country have not been remarkable. It will require but little effort to recall the many representatives of the common-place in women who have filled-or rather failed to fill—the places made theirs by reason of their husbands' positions. The harmony of domestic life has been lost to public men, no less than to those not known to the public, by their refusal or their inability to recognize the individuality of their wives and the duty these same wives owed to society and the world at large.