se was
characteristic. "Uncle," he said, "I can account for it in the following
manner--George has followed your precepts, but I have followed your
example." At the outbreak of the Civil War, Captain Magruder resigned
from the Navy and went with his family to Canada, where his daughter
Helen married James York MacGregor Scarlett, whose title of nobility was
Lord Abinger, his father having been raised to the peerage as a "lower
Lord."

Another Virginia family of social prominence, whose members mingled much
in Washington society while I was still visiting the Winfield Scotts,
was that of the Masons of "Colross," the name of their old homestead
near Alexandria in Virginia. Mrs. Thomson F. Mason was usually called
Mrs. "Colross" Mason to distinguish her from another family by the same
name, that of James M. Mason, United States Senator from Virginia. The
family thought nothing of the drive to Washington, and no entertainment
was quite complete without the "Mason girls," who were especially bright
and attractive young women. Open house was kept at this delightful
country seat and many were the pleasant parties given there. One of the
daughters, Matilda, married Charles H. Rhett, a representative South
Carolinian, and my friend, Cornelia Scott, was one of her bridesmaids.
Florence, another sister, who was generally called "Folly," married
Captain Thomas G. Rhett of the Army, a brother of her sister's husband.
He resigned at the beginning of the Civil War, as a South Carolinian
would indeed have been a _rara avis_ in the Federal Army in 1861, and
became an officer in the Confederate Army; while from 1870 to 1873 he
was a Colonel of Ordnance in the Army of the Khedive. Miss Betty Mason,
the oldest of these sisters, was a celebrated beauty and became the wife
of St. George Tucker Campbell of Philadelphia.

It was about this time I first made the acquaintance of Emily Virginia
Mason, who recently died in Georgetown after a long and active life. We
were accustomed to have long conversations over the tea table concerning
bygone days, and I sadly miss her bright presence. Her memories of a
varied life both in Washington and Paris were highly entertaining and as
one of her auditors I never grew weary while listening to her graphic
descriptions of persons and things. She was a daughter of John T. Mason
and a sister of Stevens Thompson Mason, the first governor of Michigan,
often called the "Boy Governor." She was very active during