with the alleged mutineer
Cromwell. Meeting Mackenzie he stated this fact, saying at the same time
that he found him a well-disposed and capable seaman. Mackenzie quickly
responded that "he had a bad eye," and then Lieutenant Morris recalled
that the unfortunate man had a cast in one eye.

A few years after his court-martial Mackenzie fell dead from his horse.
One of the wardroom officers of the _Somers_ was Adrian Deslonde of
Louisiana, whose sister married the Hon. John Slidell, of whom I have
already spoken as Commander Mackenzie's brother.

I seldom hear the name of John Slidell without being reminded of a
witticism which I heard from my mother's lips, the author of which was
Louisa Fairlie, a daughter of Major James Fairlie, who, during the War
of the Revolution, served upon General Steuben's staff. She was, I have
understood, a great belle with a power of repartee which bordered upon
genius. During the youth of John Slidell he attended a dinner at a
prominent New York residence and sat at the table next to Miss Fairlie.
In a tactless manner he made a pointedly unpleasant remark bearing upon
the marriage of her sister Mary to the distinguished actor, Thomas
Apthorpe Cooper, a subject upon which the Fairlie family was somewhat
sensitive. Miss Fairlie regarded Mr. Slidell for only a moment, and then
retorted: "Sir, you have been _dipped_ not _moulded_ into society"--an
incident which, by the way, I heard repeated many years later at a
dinner in China. To appreciate this witticism, one may refer to the New
York directory of 1789, which describes John Slidell, the father of the
Slidell of whom we are speaking, as "soap boiler and chandler, 104
Broadway." Miss Fairlie's pun seems to me to be quite equal to that of
Rufus Choate, who, when a certain Baptist minister described himself as
"a candle of the Lord," remarked, "Then you are a dipped, but I hope not
a wick-ed candle." It is said that upon another occasion, after the
return of Mr. Slidell from a foreign trip, he was asked by Miss Fairlie
whether he had been to Greece. He replied in the negative and asked the
reason for her query. "Oh, nothing," she said, "only it would have been
very natural for you to visit Greece in order to renew early
associations!" Many years thereafter Priscilla Cooper, the wife of
Robert Tyler and the daughter-in-law of President John Tyler, a daughter
of Thomas Apthorpe Cooper and his wife, Mary Fairlie, presided at the
White House during