Page:The Ladies of the White House.djvu/185

Rh best for his future, and her sorrow was borne with the patient and cheerful resignation which belonged to her character.

"The recollection of that parting as a trial for her stirs up, even at this distance of time, the long dormant feelings which I thought my last tear had been shed for. You, dear madam, will excuse this revival of incidents not required for your sketch, and will use such things only as may have an interest for the public. His first cruise lasted eighteen months, in the U. S. ship John Adams, which went up the Mediterranean as far as Constantinople; and one of its incidents was the breaking out of the cholera on board. He got back to us safely, however, and my mother was rewarded for her sufferings by the encomiums elicited by his conduct and character from the officers under whom he had served, and their predictions as to the useful and honorable career which lay before him. She continued to hear him highly spoken of, and to learn that he was respected by all who knew him, and that his leisure hours on board the ship were devoted to reading and study. In the interval between his cruises, he was to stay with her in Washington.

"In the second year of her residence there, she had the happiness of having my brother Lewis, another of her younger children, added to her family. He obtained a clerkship, which afforded him a post while he was qualifying himself for the practice of the law, and he remained with us until his marriage, which took place a