wenty thousand
a year for life. He smiled his only smile that evening when he thought
how rapidly she would rout every man Jack of his political following out
of her parlours, and how meekly they would submit to banishment into a
back-office with an oil-cloth carpet and two cane chairs.

He felt that Mrs. Lee was more necessary to him than the Presidency
itself; he could not go on without her; he needed human companionship;
some Christian comfort for his old age; some avenue of communication
with that social world, which made his present surroundings look cold
and foul; some touch of that refinement of mind and morals beside which
his own seemed coarse. He felt unutterably lonely. He wished Mrs.
Lee had asked him home to dinner; but Mrs. Lee had gone to bed with a
headache. He should not see her again for a week. Then his mind turned
back upon their morning at Mount Vernon, and bethinking himself of Mrs.
Sam Baker, he took a sheet of note-paper, and wrote a line to Wilson
Keen, Esq., at Georgetown, requesting him to call, if possible, the
next morning towards one o'clock at the Senator's rooms on a matter
of business. Wilson Keen was chief of the Secret Service Bureau in the
Treasury Department, and, as the depositary of all secrets, was often
called upon for assistance which he was very good-natured in furnishing
to senators, especially if they were likely to be Secretaries of the
Treasury.

This note despatched, Mr. Ratcliffe fell back into his reflective mood,
which led him apparently into still lower depths of discontent until,
with a muttered oath, he swore he could "stand no more of this," and,
suddenly rising, he informed his visitors that he was sorry to leave
them, but he felt rather poorly and was going to bed; and to bed he
went, while his guests departed, each as his business or desires might
point him, some to drink whiskey and some to repose.

On Sunday morning Mr. Ratcliffe, as usual, went to church. He always
attended morning service--at the Methodist Episcopal Church--not wholly
on the ground of religious conviction, but because a large number of his
constituents were church-going people and he would not willingly shock
their principles so long as he needed their votes. In church, he kept
his eyes closely fixed upon the clergyman, and at the end of the sermon
he could say with truth that he had not heard a word of it, although the
respectable minister was gratified by the attention his discourse had