Mary Todd, born in Lexington, Ky., had from girlhood a supreme desire to become mistress of the White House, which, however, did not seem probable when she married Abraham Lincoln in 1842, but later her ambition was realized. She was small, attractive in appearance, inclined to stoutness, self possessed in manner, and would have enjoyed her high position had not the troublous events of the Rebellion prevented all festivities and converted the White House into a public institution. The death of her second son preyed sorely upon her, but when in 1865 her husband was assassinated, the shock was too great, and that, added to the blow of her youngest boy’s death soon after his father’s, partly unsettled her reason. Although she traveled much abroad, she never recovered, mentally or physically. She died of paralysis in her sister’s home at Springfield, Ill., in 1882, and was interred in the Lincoln Monument vault with her husband and children.