officer in the suite of
Rochambeau what time the French defenders of liberty conquered the women
of Rhode Island. After the war was over, our officer resigned his love of
glory for the heart of one of the loveliest women and the care of the
best plantation on the Island. I have seen a miniature of her, which her
lover wore at Yorktown, and which he always swore that Washington
coveted--a miniature painted by a wandering artist of the day, which
entirely justifies the French officer in his abandonment of the trade of
a soldier. Such is man in his best estate. A charming face can make him
campaign and fight and slay like a demon, can make a coward of him, can
fill him with ambition to win the world, and can tame him into the
domesticity of a drawing-room cat. There is this noble capacity in man to
respond to the divinest thing visible to him in this world. Etienne
Debree became, I believe, a very good citizen of the republic, and in '93
used occasionally to shake his head with satisfaction to find that it was
still on his shoulders. I am not sure that he ever visited Mount Vernon,
but after Washington's death Debree's intimacy with our first President
became a more and more important part of his life and conversation. There
is a pleasant tradition that Lafayette, when he was here in 1784,
embraced the young bride in the French manner, and that this salute was
valued as a sort of heirloom in the family.

I always thought that Margaret inherited her New England conscience from
her great-great-grandmother, and a certain esprit or gayety--that is, a
sub-gayety which was never frivolity--from her French ancestor. Her
father and mother had died when she was ten years old, and she had been
reared by a maiden aunt, with whom she still lived. The combined fortunes
of both required economy, and after Margaret had passed her school course
she added to their resources by teaching in a public school. I remember
that she taught history, following, I suppose, the American notion that
any one can teach history who has a text-book, just as he or she can
teach literature with the same help. But it happened that Margaret was a
better teacher than many, because she had not learned history in school,
but in her father's well-selected library.

There was a little stir at Margaret's entrance; Mr. Lyon was introduced
to her, and my wife, with that subtle feeling for effect which women
have, slightly changed the lights. Perhaps Margaret's complex