ton, in his wife's short gown and petticoat, and Mrs. Washington, in her husband's coat, burst in upon the scene and gave the youthful revellers a fine fright, after which they all settled down to enjoy the "apple pye" together. Elsewhere the same chronicler tells of Mr. Newton having received "his discard" from her cousin Nancy, and, with never a regret for the disappointed lover, gleefully relates that he could not tell the difference between "The Belle's Stratagem" and "The Country Cousin" when read in the distracting presence of Miss Nancy. They were sad coquettes in their youth, these fair dames, although they look so demure in their portraits, and proved such exemplary wives and mothers in later years. Duels and despairing lovers seem scarcely to have ruffled the serenity of their lovely countenances, or to have made their hearts beat faster under their stiff bodices. Did they realize, with a wisdom beyond their years, that heart-breaks were not of necessity fatal? Yet how crushed and bruised the poor hearts seemed! Thomas Jefferson, at the age of nineteen, filled his letters to his friend, John Page, with rhapsodies upon the form and face of his "Belinda," humbly prays for another watch paper cut by her hands, and calls upon Providence to sustain him through the trial should she refuse him at the next Apollo ball, where he designs putting his fate to the touch. That he lost we know, as Rebecca Burwell, his "Belinda," soon after became the wife of Jacqueline Ambler, of Virginia; and although Jefferson felt, poor lad, that from him the joys of life had fled forever, it was not long before he recovered and became the devoted lover of Martha Skelton, who made Monticello an earthly paradise to her young husband during the brief period of their married life. Another beautiful Miss Burwell, also of Williamsburg, turned the head of an earlier Virginia statesman, Francis Nicholson, who, like an Eastern sultan rather than a Colonial governor, proposed to cut the throats of his rival, of the clergyman who performed the ceremony, and of the justice who issued the license. "C'est l'amour, c'est l'amour Qui tourne le monde ronde !" It seems as if the old couplet had been singing itself down all the years to assure us that these grandmothers and grandfathers of ours, with all their wisdom and sacrifice and devotion to duty, were capable of the same endearing follies that belong to their children of to-day. TREADING the stone floors of old Christ Church, Philadelphia, under which lie buried early governors of Pennsylvania and soldiers of Colonial times, we can picture to ourselves President Washington, stately little Lady Washington, and lovely Nellie Custis, preceded by their footman, entering the church to take their places in the pew reserved for them between those of Bishop White and Dr. Franklin. Sitting in the Washington pew, in Christ Church at Alexandria, where the General was a vestryman, the spare form and intellectual face of the present rector under the sounding-board recall Seba Smith's lines, "That sounding board, to me it seemed A mystery I almost deemed Quite hid from vulgar eye; And that old pastor, wrapt in prayer, In Trinity Church, New York, once called King's Chapel, the tombs and memorials of early American bishops and heroes almost cause us to overlook the fact that but one stone remains of the original building; while in the older church of St. Paul's, one remembers that William Vesey, reared upon the stern doctrine of Increase. Mather, turned aside from that especial way of righteousness to preach here as early as 1704. Farther north, in a region long inhospitable to churches, Cotton Mather having announced that he "found no just ground in Scripture to apply such a trope as church to a public assembly," we find our way through the winding streets of old |