New York was the seat of government.

[Illustration: MRS. JOHN STILL WINTHROP, NEE ARMISTEAD, BY SULLY

_From a portrait owned by John Still Winthrop of Tallahassee._]

Mr. and Mrs. John Austin Stevens lived on Bleecker Street and had a
number of interesting daughters. They were an intellectual family and I
attended an entertainment given by them in honor of Martin Farquhar
Tupper, the author of "Proverbial Philosophy." Mr. Stevens' sister,
Lucretia Ledyard Stevens, married Mr. Richard Heckscher of
Philadelphia.

Another gentlewoman of the same period was Mrs. Laura Wolcott Gibbs,
wife of Colonel George Gibbs of Newport. The first Oliver Wolcott, a
Signer, Governor of Connecticut and General in the Revolutionary War,
was her grandfather; while the second of the same name, Secretary of the
Treasury under Washington and Adams, Governor of his State and United
States Judge, was her father. I am in the fullest sympathy with the
following remarks concerning her made at her funeral by the Rev. Dr.
Henry W. Bellows: "I confess I always felt in the presence of Mrs. Gibbs
as if I were talking with Oliver Wolcott himself, and saw in her
self-reliant, self-asserting and independent manner and speech an
unmistakable copy of a strong and thoroughly individual character,
forged in the hottest fires of national struggle. The intense
individuality of her nature set her apart from others. You felt that
from the womb she must have been just what she was--a piece of the
original granite on which the nation was built.... The force, the
courage, the self-poise she exhibited in the ordinary concerns of our
peaceful life would in a masculine frame have made, in times of national
peril, a patriot of the most decided and energetic character--one able
and willing to believe all things possible, and to make all the efforts
and sacrifices by which impossibilities are accomplished."

Mrs. Gibbs was literally steeped and moulded in the traditions of the
past; in fact, she was a reminder of the noble women of the
Revolutionary era, many of whom have left records behind them. She was
gifted with a keen sense of humor, and her talent in repartee was
proverbial. Although many years my senior, I found delightful
companionship in her society, and her home was always a great resource
to me. Her accomplished daughter, the wife of Captain Theophile
d'Oremieulx, U.S.A., was particularly skilled in music. Her son, Wolcott
Gibbs, the distinguished Professo