Page:An Epistle to Posterity.djvu/74

Rh widow with a very handsome daughter, Miss Wilcox. Mrs. Ashley was afterwards the wife of the Hon. J. J. Crittenden. She was a most amiable woman, who always called every man colonel or general. ("Always give men brevet rank," she said to me, confidentially. "If they are colonels call them general; if they are captains call them colonel. They will forgive you.") Mrs. Ashley could say a sharp thing when occasion required. She once said to me that a certain lady, who had always been very jealous of her, had bought of her a French invoice, a toilette, which she, going into mourning, could not wear. This other woman sent back the slippers after having worn them, saying, " They are too big. I could swim in them." Mrs. Ashley took them calmly, and looking at them remarked, "My dear, I am a larger woman than you are in every respect."

The President's "levees," as we used to call them, were very much smaller than to-day, but they were very like them. I always wonder what we did for light in those days, as oil lamps, always smoky, and candles, always dripping, are all that these splendid affairs had to use in place of the diamond brilliancy of to-day. I once went up-stairs in the White House to search for a pair of overshoes, and I remember there was one candle in that immense hall. I can see now that feeble glimmer.

Mr. Corcoran gave fine dinners; so did the English and French ministers; but elsewhere I do not remember anything like the luxury of to-day. Indeed, it did not exist, and those who could afford it did not care for it. John Quincy Adams, whose magnificent head was the pride of the House, whose fame made him our first citizen, who was a rich man, lived plainly in rather a Southern fashion. It was a great treat to be permitted to see Mrs. Adams, who had been, as Mr. Everett told