lieve herself from all further care, and make her home, either with her daughter or at Mount Vernon. She thanked them for their kind offers, remarking: "My wants are few in this world, and I feel perfectly competent to take care of myself."

To her son-in-law, Col. Fielding Lewis, she left the keeping of her books. Said she: "Your eyesight is better than mine, but leave the executive management to me." This she did, not from an undue attachment to worldly affairs, but because to cease all employment of this kind, after engaging in it for sixty years, would have shocked her old and firmly fixed habits to her discomfort.

The three last years of her life she suffered much from a painful disease, cancer in the breast. She bore her affliction with calm and pious resignation, and died at the age of eighty-five, in the hope of a blissful immortality. She was buried on her farm, near Fredericksburg, Va.

The wife of George Washington was born in New Kent county, Virginia, in May, 1732. Her maiden name was Martha Dandridge. At that time there were very few, if any, female seminaries in this country. Wealthy people educated their daughters at home, with the help of private teachers. This sort of home-education had its advantages. It moulded the mind and manners of young ladies in a style such as the best seminaries of our day seldom impart. Miss Dandridge is said to have been a beautiful young lady, of pleasing manners, amiable disposition, and of rare mental culture. Soon after she entered society her charms attracted many admirers. Williamsburg was then the capital of the Colony of Virginia, where the royal Governor lived, like a little monarch. At his social gatherings she soon became a favorite. At the early age of seventeen she was married to Col. Daniel Park Custis. It is said that the father of the young man would have preferred a lady of still higher rank for his son. The marriage was an alliance of sincere affection. Mr. Custis became a successful Virginia planter. He was an affectionate husband and a high-toned gentleman. They had four children, two of whom, a son and a daughter, lived to mature life. After less than

ten years of happy married life, Mr. Custis died. To his young widow he left a good name and a large estate.

In 1758, Col. George Washington, a young Virginia officer of twenty-seven, reached the Pamunkey branch of the York river, in this State, on an important journey to Williamsburg. He was attended by his Scotch body-servant. Both rode gay horses. They were ferried across the river. On the southern bank a Mr. Chamberlayne, a planter living in the neighborhood, accosted Col. Washington, and claimed him as his guest. Thanking him cordially, Washington stated that he was travelling in behalf of pressing business with the Governor of the Colony at Williamsburg, and would have to forego the pleasure of his hospitality. The invitation was pressed, with the additional argument that a charming young widow was then at his house. Washington at length consented to a few hours' delay, but no longer than till after dinner.

One of the European poets holds that there is a predestination in true love. Whomever Providence designs to be wedded, will some time and somewhere meet. If it is to be, it will be, and no power of earth or anywhere else can hinder it: so he says. A strange coincidence, we will call it Providential, even if not absolutely and irresistibly predestinated from all eternity, here brought two young persons together. Thus Col. Washington and Mrs. Custis met. Was it for the first time? We are not told. Most likely they had not met during her married life. Perhaps, very probably they had met at some of the gay levees of the Governor, at his Williamsburg Court. At this time Mrs. Custis had been a widow about three years, and had a son and a daughter living. She is said to have been "rather below the middle size, but extremely well shaped, with an agreeable countenance, dark-hazel eyes and hair, and those frank, engaging manners, so captivating in Southern women."

The dinner must have been given at the old-fashioned hour of noon. Bishop, his body-servant, had been ordered to have his horses ready at a fixed hour. He well knew that Washington had never been known to be a minute after

the time appointed. The servant had his horses before the door on the minute. The proud chargers restlessly neighed and pawed the earth. For once Col. Washington was behind time. What could the matter be? Horses and keeper waited impatiently from hour to hour, till evening. Toward nightfall the brave Col. tried to hasten away on his official mission. But fate or matrimonial predestination held him to the spot. His good host enjoyed the scene of the impatient Bishop and his restless horses. Greatly enjoyed the scene within doors, too. He would under no consideration allow his guest to leave his house after sunset. Doubtless, to his surprise, it did not require much coaxing to prevail on the Colonel to tarry all night. The horses were taken to the stable, and things went their predestined way in the hearts of the two lovers. Mrs. Custis is said to have had many suitors. If so, there was no time to be lost. Besides, Washington had a habit never to put off till to-morrow what could be attended to to-day. Tradition says that they mutually plighted their faith before they separated. They were married on January 6, 1759.

An old negro, named Cully, was a servant in Mrs. Custis' family at the time of this courtship. Many years later, when he was in his hundredth year, a grandson of Mrs. Custis inquired of him:

"And so you remember when Col. Washington came a-courting of your mistress?"

"Ay, master, that I do. Great times, sir, great times! Shall never see the like again. Never see'd the like, sir; never the likes of him, tho' I have seen many in my day; so tall, so straight! And then he sat a horse, and rode with such an air! Ah, sir, he was like no one else! Many of the grandest gentlemen in their gold lace were at the wedding, but none looked like

the man himself!"

A large part of Mrs. Washington's married life was spent away from her beautiful home at Mount Vernon. During the Revolutionary war she spent much of her time with her husband in the army. At the close of every campaign a special detachment of soldiers brought her from Mount Vernon to head-quarters. As soon as

the army was moving for active engagements she was sent home again. In her later life she said that she heard the first cannon at the opening and the last at the closing of all the campaigns of the Revolutionary war.

In camp she was sometimes exposed to danger. While the American army was in New Jersey it was annoyed by panics, or feigned attacks of the enemy. The soldiers would be driven into the camps or houses where Washington and his officers had their quarters. The private rooms of their ladies would be crowded with the military, while the latter contented themselves as best they could. In times of peril Mrs. Washington evinced great calmness and courage.

In camp, Lady Washington, as the soldiers called her, was a universal favorite. She went by the name of "The Soldiers' Friend." No soldier in pain or want appealed to her in vain. He was always sure of receiving a kind word, if no more. Brave, crippled, and disabled fellows frequented the mansion of the first President, and always fared well at the hands of the steward. They knew that his Excellency was very busy, but they would like to see the good lady. Not only a hearty meal would they eat at her board, but for many of them she had a special keepsake.

Mrs. Washington, like her husband, was an early riser. In all seasons of the year she was in the habit of rising at day-break. She would at once go after her family duties. After breakfast she spent an hour in her chamber by herself, in reading the Holy Scriptures and prayer. This practice she never omitted for more than fifty years of her life.

She was a housewife in the full sense of the term. Her practical eye saw after the details of her family; she was the ruling queen of her home domain. She appointed and provided work for her servants, and worked with her own hands. An accomplished lady visited Mount Vernon a little while before the death of Washington, and gives us the following description of Mrs. Washington's department:

"Let us repair to the old lady's room which is precisely in the style of our good old aunt's-that is to say, nicely fixed for all sorts of work. On one side sits the

sight around her. Some men were examining a piece of cloth, and before them the women stopped. A glance at the cloth, a short examination of the two bodies, and with a cry of terrible grief, the woman sank upon the floor. exclaiming: My God! My husband! my son!' Side by side in the stillness of death were father and son, and before them rocking and moaning was the wife and mother. Oh! it was a terrible scene, and many were the tears that silently fell for that widow. A mother found her son. She knew him by a ring a ring given him on his last birthday by the mother that now stood and looked at him. So quiet was her demeanor that it attracted attention. Clasping her hands above her head with a moan, she sank to the ground, before any one could catch her, insensible. They lay, side by side-the dead son, the living mother.

"One old man recognized the body of his son, fourteen years old, in one of the blackened masses; and threw himself upon it, crying: "Oh! my boy, my boy! He is not dead! No, no, no! Henry! Henry! Speak to your old father! Speak! Dead! dead! dead!" It seems that the boy asked his father's permission to go to the theatre-he had never been before; and it was refused him. The boy began to cry, and thereupon money was given him to go. The next morning he was missing; but a visit to the Morgue discovered his dead body there.

"A young lady came to identify her betrothed. They were to have been married Wednesday. Tuesday evening they went to the theatre together, and after the fire broke out they escaped. The young lady missed her opera-glass, and said to her lover, jokingly: "If you love me, go back for it." And before he could be stopped he dashed into the blazing mass, from which he was taken, with the opera-glass held tightly in his hand, dead.

"Officer James McEwen, of police headquarters, had been detailed Tues day evening to attend the performance at the theatre. Shortly before noon his headless body, identified by the clothing and his watch, was brought through the station-house and laid out in the yard. The last seen of the officer by

one or two of the survivors, he was standing at the foot of the gallery stairs, his face covered with blood, working to keep the passage-way open. That he died heroically in the performance of his duty can scarcely be doubted, for when found his body was in an upright position, and his charred baton was grasped in his blackened and burned hand. . His watch stopped at 12:58 o'clock.

"One of the saddest incidents of the fire was the death of Augustus and John McCullough and Donald Rose, the three sons of a poor widow, Mrs. Rose, of 294 Pacific Street. Augustus, aged twenty-six, and John, twenty-two, were Mrs. Rose's children by a first husband. Donald the youngest, whose father died not long ago, was only fifteen years old. All were stalwart and handsome young men, the pride of their mother's heart. They recently completed their apprenticeship as machinists in a New England town, and had secured employment in Brooklyn. They devoted their earnings to the support of their mother and sister, and, by carefully saving their money, they had procured for them a pleasant home, and with loving care were surrounding them with every comfort that self-denial on their part could procure.

"The circumstances connected with the death of Alfred H. and William A. Gray, twenty-nine and twenty years old respectively, are peculiarly painful. They were the only survivors, with the exception of a daughter, of a family of ten children. One child died from the effects of fire, and another was drowned, and now in the death of the two remaining sons it seems as if there was a strange fatality. William was engaged to a young lady living in this city.

The Solomon family, consisting of father, two sons, and two daughters perished, leaving the mother only to mourn their loss.

Another family swept away was that of Mr. Charles Blackford, aged thirtyeight, his wife, and only daughter, Florence, aged thirteen. None of their bodies were identified.

Mr. Smith, steward of the West Point Military Academy, lost his mother and sister, and has become partially insane