The life depicted in the Waverley novels seems to me scarcely more remote than that in Virginia before the war. As is well known, the land, the wealth, the influence, the education were possessed by comparatively few families; and I think there has never been so much happiness enjoyed by any other community or class of people in this country as those families enjoyed for generations. Whatever may be said of their social system—and I am aware that it was not the best—it was perfect of its kind. From their point of view, everything was as it should be, always excepting the acts of one or the other party in politics. Life was made easy, and such exacting cares and responsibilities as could not be honorably evaded were met without friction, without struggle, without question. Beyond the observance of a few perfectly-defined habits and customs we did not feel it necessary to wander in search of social law. What a vast amount of the worry that perplexes too many other people we escaped! What does the world think? what will people say? whom shall we recognize? how do we appear?—such questions, that bring so many of my sex to premature gray hairs, disturbed us not. If one's standing was what it should be, all Virginia knew it; and that was the end of it. If one's standing was not what it should be, all Virginia knew that; and there, again, was the end of it. It is not easy for ladies reared under less settled conditions to realize how much this heritage meant to us. We loved our time-honored pleasures; we loved our friends; we loved the old homes and old ways in which our ancestors, undisturbed by the restlessness of the North and West, had lived and died before us; we loved our State.

To voluntarily put all this behind me after the meridian of life was passed; to take poverty for my companion and go forth into a world I had never seen; to send an only son to fight against the traditions, the kindred, the State that were so dear,—what this cost may Heaven spare the women of the North from ever knowing! They could hope and pray for the preservation of what they cherished and for the destruction of what they condemned. But the Southern woman who was loyal, view it as she would, could but hope and pray for the destruction of what she loved. Looking back now on those dreadful days, sorrowing for the sad necessities of the case, I can but thank God for the fortitude and insight with which He then endowed me, for the result that at length justified my trust, and put away all other recollections of the later time as something too painful to dwell upon even in thought. The Virginia that shall live in my memory is one that is gone for ever.

Living as we did on a spur of the Blue Ridge, in the most salubrious part of the State, one would have thought there was no necessity for going elsewhere during the hot months. But my mother, near half a century ago, thought differently. About the first of July we always started on what I used to call, when a girl, our "pilgrimage." In an old-fashioned coach, round as an apple and lifted high in the air—which in my childish fancy was ever associated with the one the fairy made from Cinderella's pumpkin—with a fat old coachman, and horses as fat and lazy as he, we would make the distance of twenty miles a day. We accomplished about half this in the cool morning, stopping at some country tavern during the heat of the day, and driving another ten miles amid the shades of evening. Behind us, at a respectful distance, trundled our baggage-wagon. We had relations in every county, as all true Virginians were bound to have; and we would tarry for days with them on our journeys, with as little regard to reaching a definite place at a definite time as if a thousand years remained to us.

One of these summer jaunts, when I was a girl, on which I first saw Mr. Madison, is particularly impressed on my memory. We sojourned several days at his lovely seat, Montpelier, Mrs. Madison being an old friend of my mother's. The venerable ex-President was then much emaciated, and I thought was failing rapidly. He lay most of the time on a couch in the middle of the room adjoining the dining-room, wrapped in a black silk dressing-gown elaborately quilted, and did not look larger than a boy of thirteen. At dinner the first day I was attacked by ague, and Mrs. Madison, leading me into the next room, placed me on his couch. I awoke an hour or two after in a high fever, and the look of his face which has outlived all others in my recollection is that of amusement which lighted the wan features on beholding the expression of bewilderment and confusion which overspread mine as I opened my eyes, half delirious, and found him lying beside me.

In her long talks with us on this occasion Mrs. Madison told many incidents of her life in Philadelphia and Washington. The two following are in her own words, as nearly as I can repeat them: "One day in Philadelphia," she said, "I was sitting in my parlor with a very dear friend, Mrs. R. B. Lee, when in walked Payne Todd [her son] dressed in my calico bed-gown. While we were laughing at the figure he cut, the servant threw open the door and announced General and Mrs. Washington. What to do with that dreadful boy I didn't know. He could not face the President in that garb. Neither could he leave the room without meeting them, for the door they were entering was the only one. I made him crawl quickly under a low, broad settee on which I was sitting. I had just time to arrange the drapery when the Washingtons entered. After the courtly greeting and the usual compliments of the season, there came from under the settee a heavy sigh, which evidently attracted the general's notice. However, I only talked and laughed a little louder, hoping to divert his attention, when—oh me!—there came an outcry and a kick that could not be ignored. So I stooped down and dragged Payne out by the leg. General Washington's dignity left him for once. Laugh? why he fairly roared! He nearly went into convulsions. The sight of that boy in that gown, all so unexpected, coming wrong end first from under my seat,—it was too much."

Mr. and Mrs. Madison would in private sometimes romp and tease each other like two children, and engage in antics that would astonish the muse of History. Mrs. Madison was stronger as well as larger than he. She could—and did—seize his hands, draw him upon her back and go round the room with him whenever she particularly wished to impress him with a due sense of man's inferiority. Speaking of their flight from Washington on the 24th of August, 1814, she said: "After Mr. Madison had left the White House for Fairfax, I busied myself in gathering up the little things I prized and packing them in the carriage, which stood ready at the door. I had placed a servant at the gate to warn me of the approach of the English troops. I had just left the sitting-room with a cup and saucer which had belonged to Marie Antoinette when in rushed my sentinel. After securing the portrait of Washington, and getting that into the carriage, I jumped in myself, and away we went for the Chain Bridge. I was dreadfully frightened, and expected to be pursued. We drove as fast as we could without breaking the carriage to pieces. I looked out of the back window, thinking I might see what was going on in Washington; and, sure enough, to my horror there was a British officer galloping after us at full speed, followed by some soldiers. I was so alarmed that I opened the door and sprang into the road. I had no bonnet—only a purple turban—on my head, and my face, I knew, was red as a poppy. In my excitement I thought I could run faster than the carriage. The officer passed me, wheeled suddenly, bowed low, and asked me if he saw Mrs. Madison, the President's lady, at the same time placing his hand in the bosom of his coat. I inclined my head, expecting that he would draw forth nothing less than a pistol. But it was a package instead of a pistol that he offered, saying, 'I was requested to place this in your hands by Lady —— of England, and finding you had just left your residence, I questioned your servants and took the liberty of following you.' He turned with a low bow, and was gone, leaving me overwhelmed with mortification."

The seat that inspired Swallow Barn was the home of my aunt. John P. Kennedy was her nephew and my cousin. In its main features the book is singularly true, as an artist would say, in its effects. The prominent character of Mr. Tracy is almost a literal portrait. To me, so familiar with the real scenes, there seemed an appearance of rather too much restraint, as if the conscientious author felt too constantly the fear that his hand, gentle as it was, might transgress the laws of hospitality and decorum. This feeling on my part arose, no doubt, from the single fact that I did know the reality, and thus knew many episodes that would have made the sketches richer to us giddy young people of that jolly household, but which did not commend themselves to the practised writer. He took pains to place Swallow Barn on the lower James. But it was west of the Blue Ridge, in Jefferson county. The mother of Kennedy was a very beautiful and highly accomplished woman. She was known among her friends as "Kennedy's angel." She excelled particularly in music, always tuning her piano herself, and giving her preference to the works of Mozart. Here at her sister's, Mrs. Dandridge's—at "Swallow Barn," as we may now call it—she and Kennedy's father passed their later years, and here many of Cousin John's happiest days were spent. He always retained his boyish love of fun. He and Washington Irving would come up to the old place together, and then beware! No one escaped their mischief. They spared neither age, sex nor previous condition. Such pranks, such absurdities, such good-natured deviltry, as reigned supreme till they were gone! During harvest they would take their seats under the trees with the hands at the long dinner-tables, and assiduously bottle up quaint sayings and odd doings for future use.

One adventure in particular, which I think is not alluded to in Swallow Barn, should have formed a chapter there. Kennedy himself was the ringleader, and his wife's father the victim. The old gentleman was expected to arrive on a certain day, as a visitor, from Baltimore. It was not long after Nat Turner's insurrection, and he had conceived an exaggerated idea of the affair. He was a little timid, in consequence, about travelling into Virginia alone at that particular time. John knew that his father-in-law was decidedly "nervous" on the subject. So he, with what we used to call "the clan," the endless line or circle of cousins—Dandridges, Kennedys, Pendletons—blacked their faces, clothed themselves like plantation hands, carrying old muskets, spades and forks, with cocks' feathers in the hats of the leaders, and marched to meet their prey. When "attacked" by the gang, the old gentleman gave himself up for lost. They surrounded his carriage, but before dragging him forth to his doom they began delivering to him the most preposterous harangue; which, notwithstanding his fright, led him to detect a son-in-law under the disguise of the principal desperado. Anger was useless with such a party, and by the time he reached the house his prayers for mercy had changed to laughter. Prominent in "the clan" and its diversions in those days was Colonel Strother, subsequently "Porte Crayon:" "Cousin Dave" was his title then.

When Hon. Charles J. Faulkner was married he was keeping bachelor's hall, and it was proposed that he should give his bride a breakfast the next morning. Kennedy was the master spirit in the arrangements. The table was covered with a cloth that was far from immaculate, and set with broken, cracked and odd pieces of china. The viands were bacon, corn-bread, etc., arranged in the most grotesque manner possible. When the bridal-party were ushered in, profoundly ignorant of the joke, they stood horror-stricken. Kennedy, solemn as an owl, clad as a butler and with white apron, advanced and presented to the bride about a peck of great rusty keys strung on a chain that might have drawn a plough, the whole so heavy she could not lift them. And the speech in which he presented them! Any attempt to repeat or describe its drollery would only spoil it. I believe he never wrote anything so witty, so inimitably funny. He wound up by saying that he resigned, with tears in his eyes—which were tears of laughter—all authority and control over the establishment. When the farce was played out there was another announcement, and then a breakfast fit for the gods was served in earnest.

John P. Kennedy had no children, but was passionately fond of the children of his relations, especially those of his brothers, who in turn almost worshipped him. Making all allowances, of course, for the differences in their surroundings, the geographical difference in their homes, it always seemed to me that there was an interesting resemblance between him and Irving in many little things that the world could scarcely know. In what they have written the similarity of their humor and style must be apparent to every one, and Kennedy's literary character was fashioned very much, I think, by the influence of his more famous friend's. When quite a young man Kennedy edited, with some kindred spirits, a kind of Salmagundi paper in Baltimore, ridiculing most effectively a certain class of people whose pretensions so far exceeded their social worth as to make them legitimate game for his shafts. It was called The Red Letter. Many suspected, but none of the victims knew, who were the writers. Some amusing incidents grew out of it, the aforesaid victims being afraid to invite the aforesaid kindred spirits to their parties, but still more afraid not to invite them. Lest some reader should have a doubt about the attitude of this genial, gentle and true man on one important public question, let me add that one of the last things I knew of his doing was to induce Sheridan to send an escort of cavalry through to Martinsburg to bring out a young girl whose parents were Unionists and were then cut off by Southern troops, taking her to his house and educating her as if she had been his daughter. The last time I saw his friend Irving was when Kennedy was retiring from the Secretaryship of the Navy. The new administration had come in, and the members of the old cabinet were very busy in closing up and turning over their portfolios and arranging their personal affairs for departure. The domestic concerns of the retiring Secretary, whose guest Irving had been during the winter, were therefore in the same state of upheaval as were affairs at the department. I called to take leave of the family, but not a soul was in the house except Irving. I inquired lightly how he would dispose of himself in the general break-up, "Well," answered the quizzical old bachelor with mock plaintiveness, "I suppose Mrs. Kennedy will pack me up with the rest of the old crockery."

American country-life can hardly again be so picturesque as it was on some of the plantations of Virginia in my young days. The cavalcades of huntsmen returning with a fox-brush in the cap of the foremost rider, or counting their partridges on the porch before the ladies—partridges being the birds known as quails in the North; the riding in the great carriage to church, surrounded by a retinue on horseback; the coming and going of company to spend the day, which meant from noon till twilight; the gathering of the rose-leaves to be dried and sprinkled over the table- and bed-linen for the odor they imparted;—an atmosphere whose charm cannot be reproduced envelopes these scenes of the far-away past.

The chief agricultural event of the year in the region where I lived was the harvesting of the grain. All the laboring white men who could be of service were employed with the slaves at such times. Their dinners were eaten at long tables under the trees, with a tub of iced toddy or mint-julep in the shade near by. Supper, when the day's work was done, brought hot coffee, rolls and biscuits, and a dance on the grass to the music of fiddle and banjo closed the scene at bedtime. The long lines of "cradlers," following their leader and laying the golden swaths smoothly across hill and valley, were a sight which was lost with keen regret by me. I shall never forget when the first reaping-machine came clattering into the wheat-fields, sounding the knell of all that was most pleasing in the harvest-time. What a commotion that first reaper made! A certain distinguished Senator of the United States—I think he was then Speaker of the House—came from afar to witness its operations and to consider its introduction on his own rather unproductive plantation. After silently taking in its movements, his hands meditatively in his pockets and his chin buried solemnly in his neckcloth, he turned away in disgust, with a comment that was brief and to the point: "Wouldn't have such a d——d fast thing on my place!" Much of the distrust, however, with which improved utensils were regarded had a better reason. Complicated and delicate machines in the hands of plantation negroes were too much like "all the modern improvements" in the terrible hands of Biddy.

I saw personally but little of the darker side of slavery. The worst pictures I could draw from my own personal knowledge would not be sufficiently hideous to be interesting. The fairest I could draw would be of my old black "mammy." From my infancy she was the comforter, counsellor and guide whose sympathy and assistance never failed me. As dignified as a duchess; as neat in her striped, home-made dress, kerchief and turban as it was possible for mortal to be; jealous of the honor of the family; serene, affectionate, proud of her usefulness,—she is among the first from whom I expect a loving welcome in heaven. My father gave her free papers after she had nursed a sick member of the family with especial faithfulness on one occasion. She locked them up in her trunk, and that was the end of them, except when she took them out to show to her friends. I think it gratified her to receive them, however. I recollect the incredulity of a good lady from Boston, who asked her if she would not like to live there, where there were no masters and mistresses. "No indeed, honey!" was the reply.

When a girl I passed a winter in the White House. It was during the last term of General Jackson. That high white head; the perpendicular hair; the clear blue eyes—one moment melting with a woman's tenderness, the next blazing like an angry lion's—peering earnestly from under the great shaggy eyebrows and over the top of the silver spectacles; the furrowed, pained face, worn with suffering and perpetual warfare, but occasionally lighted by a sudden gleam of the old fire, which nothing but death could quench, when his cane would come down with a thump and "By the Eternal!" would break forth—the nearest approach to profanity ever heard from his lips by me, or by anybody, I think, at that period of his life,—how vividly all these come back! I saw him at his best. The storms of life had wellnigh passed. His beloved wife was beckoning him to a world of rest and peace. He was the idol of a majority of his countrymen. He occupied a second time, in obedience to their voices, what he regarded as the most honorable position that any man could hold on earth—the Presidency of the United States. In pursuing what he took to be right he had conquered everybody and everything that opposed him. He had ever been the incarnation of chivalry toward women. It is natural, therefore, that under all these circumstances, in those last days of his and first days of mine, he should have appeared to me a higher type of man than many people would judge him to be from a strictly dispassionate consideration of his whole life. I was never given to hero-worship, but at that time I did come near worshipping this old hero. I am not here questioning the justice of his latest and completest biography—Mr. Parton's—but would simply remark how difficult it is for me, seeing him as I did, and only so, to realize that he was the same being who enlivens some of the earlier scenes of that book. Toward the women he respected—and there hardly seemed to be one whom he did not respect—he had a courtliness of bearing, a considerateness, a gentleness, a nobility—in short, a charm of manner—which made him, as a mere "carpet knight," the most winning old gentleman I ever knew.

In speaking of the superstitions of the Scotch-Irish, Mr. Parton says: "General Jackson himself, to the end of his life, never liked to begin anything of consequence on Friday, and would not if it could be avoided without serious injury to some important interest." So far from abstaining from any undertaking on Friday, the general has told me himself that he made it a point to start on a journey and begin such things on that day; and he laughed at the superstition. Nevertheless, I am inclined to suspect that this very fact should be taken as evidence that the superstition did exist in him; that he was conscious of it; that his judgment told him it was an unworthy weakness; and that he was determined to conquer it. He acknowledged its influence by the care he took to defy it.

In those days visitors to the White House knocked or rang as they would at the mansion-door of any private gentleman. One rainy day a visitor thus announced himself, but for some reason no servant appeared immediately to admit him. The family heard it, and so did the general in his office, where he was writing. It did not occur to me or any one else that interference with the servants' duties was necessary. Suddenly there was a rustle of papers and an apparition. "What!" thundered the President. "A citizen of the United States stands knocking at my door in the rain, and it isn't opened!" The door was opened soon after that remark.

One day the general received a letter of four or five pages of foolscap from Ireland—I do not know whether it came from Carrickfergus or not—in which the writer said that he was a cousin of the President's, and that he recollected perfectly when the general was born, and gave the exact locality and all the attendant circumstances. He closed by saying he would like to come over. Jackson laughed over the letter, and expressed his surprise that he should have been born in Ireland and in Carolina too.

It was his custom, when he had no one dining with him besides the family, to say, as he raised his single glass of wine, "Here's to absent friends!" Then, glancing toward me, he would add in a low tone, "And sweethearts, too,——."

On one occasion, when I was ill, the general called in Dr. Hunt, his family physician. The doctor was a tall, lank, ugly man—"as good as gold," but with none of the graces that are supposed to win young ladies; yet he was married to one of the loveliest young creatures I ever knew. General Jackson accompanied him to my room, and after my pulse had been duly felt and my tongue duly inspected, they drew their chairs to the fire and began to talk.

"Hunt," suddenly exclaimed the President, "how came you to get such a young and pretty wife?"

"Well, I'll tell you," replied the doctor. "I was called to attend a young lady at the convent in Georgetown. Her eyes were bad: she had to keep them bandaged. I cured her without her ever having had a distinct view of me. She left the institution, and a year afterward she appeared here in society, a belle and a beauty. At a ball I introduced myself, without the slightest ulterior design, as the physician who had restored her sight, although I supposed she had never really seen me. She instantly expressed the most heartfelt gratitude. It seemed so deep and genuine that I was touched. That very evening she informed me that she had a severe cold, and that I must again prescribe for her. Well! it don't look reasonable, but I did it. I wrote my name on a bit of paper, folded it and handed it to her, telling her she must take that prescription. She read it and laughed. 'It's a bitter pill,' she said, 'and must be well gilded if ever I take it.' But whether it was bitter or whether it was gilded, we were married."

The hospitality of the White House at that time, like that of the Hermitage, has become proverbial. Very few brought letters of introduction who were not invited to dinner. Consequently, the table was almost always full. It seemed to me that Jackson never heard of a wrong to any human being, or what he conceived to be such, without trying to right it.

When Aaron Burr was at the Hermitage in 1805 he wrote in his diary, for the entertainment of Theodosia: "The general has no children, but two lovely nieces made a visit of some days, contributed greatly to my amusement, and have cured me of all the evils of my wilderness jaunt. If I had time I would describe to you these two girls, for they deserve it." The temptation is strong to give the descriptions omitted by Mr. Burr, but it would lead me too far. They were nieces of Mrs. Jackson rather than the general's. One of them, whom he had adopted as his daughter, married her cousin, A. J. Donelson—her own maiden name being also Donelson—who was secretary to the President when I knew them, afterward minister to Austria, and candidate for Vice-President in 1856 on the ticket with Mr. Fillmore.

One Sunday evening, after dinner, Mrs. Donelson, Mrs. Jackson and I, with several other ladies, were gossiping in the Blue Room. This Mrs. Jackson, who had been a pretty Philadelphia girl, was the wife of another cousin and nephew who was born a Donelson, but who was adopted by the general, took the name of Jackson and inherited the Hermitage. Mr. Van Buren, then Secretary of State, had what is now known as "the inside track" for the succession. He, was the friend and choice of Jackson; and that settled it in the minds of those who knew both men. Mrs. Jackson—the lady mentioned above, of course, for the General's wife did not live to see the White House—disliked Van Buren for some reason. Mrs. Donelson, turning to me with affected gravity, said, "When you are Mrs. President Van Buren, I want you to send my husband to England as minister." I solemnly assured her she should have whatever she wished. Then Mrs. Barker appealed to me in behalf of her husband as collector at Philadelphia. Turning to Mrs. Jackson, I asked what she would like. "Nothing at Mr. Van Buren's hands," was the sudden reply. At that instant I heard a rustle behind me. There stood Mr. Van Buren! He was smiling, and evidently amused. We were so completely caught that there was no resource but the suppressed giggling little scream that never fails a true woman when no other strategy is possible. He gave no intimation of having heard a word. Indeed, I never saw Mr. Van Buren's perfect self-possession fail him but once: that was when he fell off his horse for me on Pennsylvania Avenue. And with this ridiculous performance these rambling reminiscences must end.

One fine spring morning the President insisted that we should invite the Cass girls, the Forsyths and some others, make a riding-party, and return with them all to the White House for lunch. He sent to Mr. Blair for the white horse he had ridden in a grand procession at New York, which Blair had bought. This fiery charger, very appropriate for such a horseman as General Jackson on a state occasion, was so spirited and appeared so unmanageable that I was afraid to touch him. But the general had made up his mind that I should ride that horse on that occasion, and I knew what it meant when his mind was made up. He put me on himself, saying, "Why, child, if you can't ride him, you couldn't ride a sheep." We reached the avenue very well, when the horse seemed to remember New York and General Jackson. He reared, plunged and dashed off. Mr. Van Buren, in trying to seize the reins, was drawn from his own saddle and dragged some distance. His position for a few moments was rather undignified, but he came up smiling and unhurt, and made as creditable an appearance as could be expected. We had a happy day in spite of the mishap, but not even the will of General Jackson ever got me on that horse again.

M. T.