epose, and heavy flowing beard; the
death calm upon the brow that for eighty years had concealed a
teeming brain, and that placid beauty that lingers upon the face
of the righteous dead, as if the freed spirit had left a smile upon
its forsaken home--these are the memories that remain of the
most illustrious and honored private citizen that the New World
has yet given to mankind."

IX
ALONG THE BYPATHS OF HISTORY

THE WIDOW OF GEN. GAINES CLAIMS PROPERTY AT NEW ORLEANS WORTH
$30,000,000--HER SUCCESS AFTER MUCH LITIGATION--THE WIDOW OF JOHN H.
EATON, SECRETARY OF WAR--A CLOUD ON HER REPUTATION--HER HUSBAND
A FRIEND OF GEN. JACKSON--A DUEL BETWEEN RANDOLPH AND CLAY--HOSTILITY
OF THE LEADERS OF WASHINGTON SOCIETY TO MRS. EATON--SECRETARY EATON
DISLIKED BY HIS COLLEAGUES--CONSEQUENT DISRUPTION OF JACKSON'S
CABINET--MRS. EATON'S POVERTY IN HER OLD AGE.

Nearly a third of a century ago, as the guest in a Washington house,
I had the opportunity of meeting Mrs. Gaines, the widow of General
Edmund P. Gaines, a distinguished officer of the War of 1812,
and Mrs. Eaton, the widow of the Hon. John H. Eaton of Tennessee, for
a number of years a Senator from that State, and later Secretary of
War during the administration of President Jackson. Their names
suggested interesting events in our history, I gladly availed myself
of the invitation to meet them.

I found Mrs. Gaines an old lady of small stature, with a profusion
of curls, and gifted with rare powers of conversation. She
spoke freely of her great lawsuits, one of which was then pending in
the Supreme Court of the United States. As I listened, I thought of
the wonderful career of the little woman before me. Few names,
a half-century ago, were more familiar to the reading public
than that of Myra Clark Gaines. She was born in New Orleans in
the early days of the century; was the daughter of Daniel Clark,
who died in 1813, the owner of a large portion of the land upon
which the city of New Orleans was afterwards built. She was his
only heir, and soon after attaining her majority, instituted a suit,
or series of suits, for the recovery of her property. After years
of litigation, the seriously controverted fact of her being the
lawful heir of Daniel Clark was established, and the contest, which
was to wear out two generations of lawyers, began in dead earnest.
The value of the property involved in the litigation then exceeded
thirty millions of dollars. At the ti