Page:An Epistle to Posterity.djvu/77

54 It was a highly exciting, agreeable, improving life for a New Hampshire girl. We saw Mr. Webster every day, often dined with him, and spent a winter at the National Hotel, dining usually at a "mess" with Mr. Clay. I saw General Taylor inaugurated, and during the winter of his short reign saw much of Mrs, Bliss at the White House. She made a charming hostess. We went very often to the House and Senate in those days. Can it be possible that the little room now devoted to statuary, with its beautiful clock, was once that immense space? The modern Capitol confuses me. I feel at home nowhere except in the rotunda. Those stiff old pictures seem like real friends — something to take hold of — in that magnificent bazaar of politics. The library, then much smaller than now, was a great lounging-place and the arena of flirtation.

A wary, witty old gentleman, General Greene, of Providence, and General Waddy Thompson, of South Carolina — they were our watchdogs. They took turns in mounting guard; and if there was a fascinating lieutenant in the navy or a wandering officer from the plains whom we wanted to meet in the library they used to try and frustrate us. But we were equal to the emergency, and I think we saw our dark-eyed lieutenants.

Mr. Benton — striking figure, with his high nose and his recollections — was a near neighbor of ours in Four-and-a-Half Street. His brilliant daughter, Mrs. Fremont, had already run away with her lieutenant, whom she so adored all her life. Susan Benton was a most brilliant woman, whom I saw afterwards in her pleasant life as the wife of a French minister, but destined to close that life under the most cruel of misfortunes. Annie Wilcox, the beauty, became Mrs. Cabell, and died. "All, all are gone, the old familiar faces." I went to my first grand