ound me
still charmed to my seat, a willing listener. I do not think even now
that it was because I was an inexperienced, uncritical youth, that I was
so readily puzzled and interested. I have written this paper mainly for
the purpose of sketching a real character, thinking her now, as I did
then, a curious study for the dilettante in anomalies of human nature,
as well as one of the most noteworthy women of her time from extraneous
circumstances. Once having taken up her _role_ as hostess, the roughness
and vulgarity slid from her as by a magic touch,--as coarse armor with
which she kept her neighbors at bay. She had the keen insight, the
delicate instinct, dainty in expression of manner and speech, of a woman
_habituee du monde_ for many crowded and watchful years. From the time
of her first marriage she spent her winters in Washington, at first
notes as a beauty and _bel esprit_, then an object of interest from her
eccentricities, her cool skill, and long familiarity with the private
political life of the capital. Her manner had the quaint archness,
over-lying intense pride, of an old French Marquise, to whom Bonaparte
is "plebeian," and the fruitful, vulgar present worthy only of being
dismissed with a shrug of the shoulders.

I went day after day to see her,--of course, at her own request: with
the same odd, half-rebuked feeling with which I opened the Indian
mound,--only that which was to be unearthed from this grave was of far
more interest to a man of the world, and much less holy, than the poor
savages' _cache_ with their dead in it. I did not broach the subject of
the Steadmans, hoping to obtain some clew to a weak point in her nature
which could be touched and roused to sympathy. I never found it. I think
she enjoyed my visits. I was fresh from the world from which she had
long been shut out, brought its breath with me, was eager and
appreciative. As a reward, she poured out an exhaustless store of
anecdote. Her times had covered a broad field, and one of glaring
contrasts; not an Indian war back to the Colonial era with which she was
not familiar; she remembered the first proclamation of the Declaration
of Independence; had known Paine, Lafayette, and Lee; sat on the side of
the court-room devoted to Burr's adherents during his trial at Richmond,
a young and brilliant beauty, while her husband faced her on the other;
talked of Benton, Clay, Webster, then political leaders, as "those young
men,--promising, but