Page:The Ladies of the White House.djvu/64

50 of cotton, striped with silk, and entirely home-made. The silk stripes in the fabric were woven from the ravelings of brown silk stockings and old crimson chair-covers!"

When peace was declared and her mantle folded round the suffering young Republic, Mrs. Washington welcomed to Mount Vernon her hero-husband, who naturally hoped that he might "move gently down the stream of life until he slept with his fathers." But a proud, fond people called him again from his retreat to guide the ship of state; nor was he who had fought her battles, and served her well, recreant now.

Mrs. Washington's crowning glory in the world's esteem is the fact that she was the bosom companion of the "Father of his Country;" but her fame as Martha Dandridee, and afterwards as Martha Custis, is due alone to her moral worth. To her, as a girl and woman, belonged beauty, accomplishments, and great sweetness of disposition. Nor should we, in ascribing her imperishable memory to her husband's greatness, fail to do reverence to the noble attributes of her own nature; yet we cannot descend to the hyperbolical strain so often indulged in by writers when speaking of Mrs. Washington. In tracing the life of an individual, it becomes necessary to examine the great events and marked incidents of the times, and generally to form from such landmarks the motives that prompted the acts of an earth-existence. More especially is this necessary if the era in which our subject lived was remarkable for any heroic deeds or