U.S.A., had served
his country during the Civil War and on account of disabilities was
awarded a handsome pension. They lived on G Street between Eighteenth
and Nineteenth Streets and her Friday afternoons were festive
occasions. Mrs. Ricketts was no mean philanthropist in her way and a
certain wag once wrote--

Here comes Mrs. Ricketts
With a pocketful of tickets.

The doggerel had a basis in fact as she frequently appeared in public
with tickets to sell for the benefit of some charitable object; and she
sold them, too, as but few had the courage to refuse her. She was an
exceedingly fine looking woman with a cordial manner and graceful
bearing. Mrs. Julia A. K. Lawrence, her mother, the widow of John Tharp
Lawrence, originally of the Island of Jamaica, lived with her, was quite
as fond of society as the daughter, and, although advanced in years,
seemed to have more friends and admirers than any woman I have ever
known.

One day by chance I met her in the drawing-room of a mutual friend, Mrs.
Sallie Maynadier, where she shocked us by fainting. One of my daughters
wrote her a note of sympathetic inquiry and received in reply the
following answer. I regarded it as a somewhat remarkable note as its
writer was then approaching her ninetieth birthday.

Pray accept my grateful thanks, my dear Miss Gouverneur, for
your kind attention in writing me such a lovely note. I wish
I had known you brought it. I would have been so much
pleased to see you in my room, which I could not leave
yesterday though very much better. I think the fainting was
from the heat of Mrs. Maynadier's parlour and the agitation
of the previous day, at the prospect of parting with my very
dear friends in the delicate state of dear Kate Eveleth's
health! I hope to hear to-day how she bore the journey, the
beautiful day very much in her favor! I can not close this
note without expressing my sincere wish that your mamma and
yourself will be so kind as to come and see me during the
winter. I know that Mrs. Gouverneur does not "pay visits"
but as I can no longer have the pleasure of meeting you at
our dear friend's I hope she will make an exception in favor
of such an old woman as myself, one too who has known and
loved so many of your father's family for generations,
dating back to President Monroe's family, when I was a child
in England and used to p