Page:The Ladies of the White House.djvu/131

Rh myself and family but as the small dust of the balance, when compared with the great community."

With the marked characteristics which made her determined and resolute, she could have occupied any post of honor requiring a strong mind and clear perceptions of right; cut off, as was her sex, from participation in the struggle around her; confined by custom to the lonely and wearisome monotony of her country home, she nevertheless stamped her character upon the hearts of her countrymen, and enrolled her name among its workers. Had she been called into any of the departments of State, or required to fill any place of trust, hers would have been an enviable name; even as it is, she occupies the foreground of the Revolutionary history, and so powerful were the energies of her soul, that biographers and historians have deemed it worth their while to deny, in lengthy terms, her influence over her husband, and exert every argument to prove that she in no way controlled his actions. The opinions of men differ on this point, and the students of American biographies decide the questions from their own stand-points. Yet who will not venture to assert, that with the culture bestowed upon her which many men received, she would have towered high above them in their pride and selfishness! Controlled by the usages of society, she could only live in her imagination, and impress upon her children the great ideas that were otherwise doomed to fritter away uselessly in her brain. Indifferent to the charms of fashionable life.