His home was at New Orleans. His eldest daughter, at the time of General Lafayette's visit to that city, was one of the twelve young girls selected on account of their beauty from its most distinguished families to crown America's friend. She lived to an advanced age, surviving her eleven companions of that memorable occasion and retaining much of her beauty till the close of her life.

The site of the city of Cincinnati was indirectly chosen by Colonel Schaumburg when he selected the spot where it later sprung up for the establishment of a fort, which he called, in honor of his first American friend, Fort Washington.

He was an accomplished artillerist, and under his direction was cast the first cannon made in the United States. While stationed in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, upon military duty, he met the lady whom he afterwards married, and who had not long previously arrived in America, whither she had come with her parents to trace a recent acquisition of land.

She was a lineal descendant of the principal Indian chief, Secaneh, of the Lenape tribe, who signed the treaty of 1683 with William Penn, selling him the large tract of land on which Philadelphia is built.

The Princess Susahena, the daughter of Secaneh, had been married to Thomas Holme McFarlane, a nephew of Thomas Holme, who was the first Surveyor-General of Pennsylvania. Three years after their marriage they sailed for Dublin, but ocean voyages in those days were trials to the stoutest constitutions, and the poor princess died before reaching the other side.

Her child, a daughter, lived, and it was the great-granddaughter of this child who became the wife of Colonel Schaumburg, so that Emilie Schaumburg is the seventh generation in lineal descent from the aboriginal princess, and attained her remarkable social queenship on the native heath of her royal ancestors.

Mrs. Henry D. Gilpin, who had known Colonel Schaumburg's family intimately and had spent much time with them in their Southern home, frequently spoke of the great beauty of Emilie Schaumburg's grandmother, and of the resemblance Emilie bore to her. She had the fresh Irish complexion and violet eyes, together with suggestions of the Indian type of her ancestry in the tall, lithe figure, delicately aquiline features, and black hair, which almost swept the ground.

They were a strikingly handsome couple, for Colonel Schaumburg was as magnificent in appearance as he was conspicuous in courage. He was several inches over six feet in height, and clung all his life to powdered hair and lace ruffles, those outward signs of the aristocrat; yet he adopted republican principles, dropped his title, and besought his children to be satisfied with the record he should leave them of services rendered his adopted country.

He had declined the overtures made him by his family in Germany, from whom he had become estranged owing to the course he had pursued in espousing the American cause. He had no desire to return and resume his career there.

When his granddaughter, however, visited Germany she was received with marked consideration by the Princess of Schaumburg-Lippe, who was reigning at the time.

True to his principles, Colonel Schaumburg opposed the formation of the Society of the Cincinnati, refusing to become a member of it, and arguing that it had for its object the inauguration of an aristocracy, and was in direct opposition to the very principles for which they had fought.

His son followed in his footsteps in selecting a military career. He was graduated from the National Military Academy in 1833, and entered the cavalry. He was a gallant officer, generous and impetuous, and as magnificent in physique as his father.

He lost his commission through a technicality which the War Department turned to his disadvantage, and fought all his life for reinstatement, being upheld by President Jackson and a majority of the United States Senate.

He had imbibed his father's ideas, and would never use the "von" in his name because his father had dropped it. When his daughter wished to resume it, however, he gave his consent and approval.

Major Schaumburg married a daughter of Stephen Page, originally of Page County, Virginia, and later of Eden Park, a beautiful country-seat, near Philadelphia, where his children were born. Miss Page, who became Mrs. Schaumburg, was a woman of much beauty and many accomplishments, which she transmitted to her daughter.

Emilie von Schaumburg grew up in the home of her uncle, Colonel James Page, with whom her name is ever identified. Though he was a man of social and political prominence, his greatest distinction, in the eyes of his fellow-citizens, arose from his relationship to her.

When this new fame dawned upon him, he had been for nearly fifty years a well-known and popular figure in the life of the city. His military record had been made in his youth during the war of 1812. He had been Postmaster and Collector of the Port of Philadelphia, a leader in Councils, County Treasurer in an era when politics had gone hand in hand with principle and patriotism. He was a Jacksonian Democrat, and had come to be looked upon as the grand old man of his party, who by birth and breeding could adorn a ball at Madam Rush's or make an after-dinner speech with as ready a grace as he could march at the head of the State Fencibles.

In no capacity, however, did he attract that peculiar interest that pursued him whenever he appeared in public with his niece. On winter afternoons, at a time when that season was rather longer in the Middle States than it is at the close of the century, and when the waters of the rivers used to remain fast frozen for many days they frequently appeared among the skaters, of whom, in his youth, Colonel Page had been one of the celebrities. He found new enthusiasm in the graceful sport, however, from the admiration he read in all faces whenever he went upon the ice with his niece.

They formed a picture that many paused to look upon, while others, who knew nothing of the intricacies of the accomplishment, gathered on the river-bank solely for the pleasure of watching them as they took those wonderfully long, sweeping curves of the "outer edge," the lithe figure of the girl seeming to float like a bird on the wing, while the splendid poise of the handsome, vigorous old man was as erect, as easy, and as firm as in his youth. He always held that the highest art in skating was in perfecting, to an almost incredible degree, the delicate balance of the body on the outer edge of the skate, and so broadening and lengthening the curves, which are ever, according to Hogarth, the lines of beauty. The result justified the theory, and he found an apt pupil in his niece, whose skating, like her dancing, was the very poetry of motion.

The beauty of some women admits of a diversity of opinion. Emilie von Schaumburg's did not. It was absolute, and the effect was instantaneous. A head of classic mould, with its rich adornment of lustrous black hair, proudly poised upon a throat and shoulders of perfect form; an oval face, lighted with a fine vivacity and captivating smile; great hazel eyes with dark brows and sweeping lashes; delicate, regular features, and a complexion which no art could imitate in its transparent fairness and brilliancy; a figure, tall and svelt, all undulating lines and willowy grace; a regal carriage, and, above all, an air of high-bred elegance and distinction; such, in her early girlhood, was Emilie von Schaumburg, whom the Prince of Wales declared the most beautiful woman he had seen in America.

It was on that famous night when the visit of His Royal Highness to the Academy of Music brought thither one of the most distinguished audiences ever assembled in Philadelphia. She was dressed with girlish simplicity in white, her only ornament being a small chain of golden sequins, which bound the rich masses of her hair and defined her shapely head, yet such was the subtle power of her presence, that from the moment she entered that crowded assembly, with its tier upon tier of brilliantly arrayed women, she became the focus of all eyes, dividing the attention of the Prince of Wales and the audience with Patti, who was pouring out her soul in matchless melody upon the stage.

One night, a few years ago, during a performance of Madame Bernhardt, in Philadelphia, a woman occupying one of the boxes, and carrying herself with that fine spirit that had been the glory of a previous generation, was recognized as Emilie Schaumburg, for so she still is, and forever will be known, among the people of her own city and country.

The discovery flew from mouth to mouth, and many who had never before seen her, as well as those who looked upon her for the first time after many years, and recalled that memorable night at the Academy of Music, bent upon her a gaze of unmistakable admiration.

Her education was principally directed by Hon. Henry Gilpin, who was the Attorney-General of Van Buren's administration, and a most finished scholar.

To the many advantages she enjoyed in having access to his library she subsequently added a thorough knowledge of several modern languages, for her intellectual endowments were in no degree inferior to her physical gifts. Though she had a fine artistic sense and an almost incredible facility in the acquirement of knowledge, she yet early recognized the necessity of serious study and intelligent application.

In this recognition and the ability to comply with its requirements, perhaps, more than in any other thing, lies the vast difference between the mere butterfly of society and the woman who leaves the impress of her individuality upon the life in which she moves.

Emilie Schaumburg never attempted a thing for which she had no special talent, but, having once undertaken a study, she pursued it with enthusiasm, following its every detail to the limit of her capacity. To an admirer, who once exclaimed, "Is there anything in the world you cannot do, and do brilliantly?" she replied, "Yes: I was a dismal failure at both sewing and arithmetic."

Her voice, in speaking as in singing, lent itself to every delicate inflection. She would delight, when still a very young child, to imitate. Each new song she caught with an unerring ear, the florid passages, roulades, and trills flowing as easily and naturally from the childish throat as from that of a bird. This marvellously flexible quality of voice she has never lost. In speaking of her musical education, she once said to a friend,—

"I have had to study phrasing and style and expression, with sostenuto, crescendo, diminuendo, and various other artistic effects, but the drudgery of exercises was spared me, thanks to my fairy godmother."

She has always retained her habits of study, and even during her first brilliant season in Paris she found time to take lessons from Madame La Grange and also from the celebrated teacher Delle Sédié. Later, however, at Nice, she studied more consecutively with Maestro Gelli, who recognized the unusual order of her talents and wrote several beautiful morceaux expressly for her.

Her beauty and accomplishments were the open sesame to the exclusive circles of the villa society at Nice, and among the many distinguished people whom she delighted with her rare gifts was the late lamented Duke of Albany. Like most of the royal family of England, he was an accomplished critic and an ardent lover of music. He was enthusiastic in his praise of Miss von Schaumburg's singing, and when she again met him, a year or two later, at a court-ball at Buckingham Palace, his greeting proved that he had not forgotten the impression it had made upon him. His first words were, "And how is the beautiful voice?"

Before she left Philadelphia her histrionic talents had perhaps made her more widely known than any other of her many accomplishments. During the war for the Union, when the stage was the means of raising many dollars for the benefit of the wounded and suffering soldiers, she was foremost among the bright and spirited society women who devoted their talents to the cause.

Her dramatic success was due neither to her beauty nor to her personal charm, though her expressive features, her voice, and her perfect grace and ease were undoubtedly powerful adjuncts. Her triumphs were legitimate, and were the result of careful study, artistic finish, and unusual histrionic ability. That she possessed, in an extraordinary degree, the power of getting out of herself and into her parts was evidenced by the tribute contained in the criticism of some friends who went to see her in "Masks and Faces." They had gone, they said, solely to see Miss Schaumburg, whom, however, they soon forgot, their interest becoming absorbed in the brilliant, fascinating, impulsive Peg.

Yet Emilie Schaumburg was a very young girl when she stepped upon the amateur stage of the Seventeenth-Street Drawing-Room, and had never had a lesson in declamation nor a suggestion from any one to help her in the study of her parts. To be able to forget one's identity, and to make one's audience forget it, is, after all, the acme of high art in acting, or, rather, it is the touch of genius which is above art, since it cannot be taught.

As Peg Woffington in "Masks and Faces," and as the Countess in the "Ladies' Battle," she carried conservative and critical audiences by storm. Ristori, who was present at one of the performances, expressed unqualified admiration at the high order of Miss Schaumburg's talent, for both rôles are considered tests to trained actresses.

She scored another success in the little operetta, "Les Noces de Jeannette," which she sang and acted in French, and in which the pièce de résistance is the great air du rossignol. There are many people in Philadelphia to-day who yet recall the brilliancy and daring of those tours de forces between the voice and the flute, each one in turn taking up the refrain and soaring higher and higher in imitation of the nightingale; yet there was never a harsh or strained note in her perfect voice, but all as liquid, pure, and full-throated as the warbling of the veritable bird.

Another of the gifts she possessed was for versification. She brought it into frequent and graceful play, but only for the enjoyment of those who were admitted to the privilege of an intimate friendship with her.

It is little wonder that Emilie von Schaumburg should have made an impress upon the city of her nativity which has remained proof against time and absence. No woman ever won a more spontaneous admiration than fell to her lot. She never appeared upon the streets that she was not surrounded and followed by both men and women, who, frequently without knowing her, came simply to look upon her beauty and glory in her possession.

She married, in England, Colonel Hughes-Hallett, of the Royal Artillery, and member of Parliament for Rochester. She resides now during the greater part of the year at Dinard, in France, where she built, some years ago, the beautiful château of Montplaisir.

Still a strikingly handsome and distinguished woman, she gathers about her the aristocracy of both France and England as well as the most eminent and charming of her compatriots. She entertains during each season with that same graciousness of hospitality with which she once presided in her uncle's home in Philadelphia.

She recently added a ball-room to Montplaisir which she inaugurated by a series of concerts and balls, among the picturesque features of the latter being minuets, gavottes, and a cotillon.

Gowned in a white and silver brocade Watteau, with panniers, over a pink satin petticoat trimmed with flounces of old lace, headed with wreaths of roses of a deeper pink, her powdered hair crowned with a black Gainsborough hat with black, white, and pink plumes, Mrs. Hughes-Hallett took part in one of the stately gavottes, making a beautiful picture against the delicate blue background and Louis Quinze decorations of her artistic ball-room.

A life filled with adulation, that would have been the undoing of a less wise woman, has in no way impaired her charm of character. Her fine mental poise, her exquisite humor, together with the generosity and sweetness of her nature, have preserved her from that calamitous sense of satiety that has overtaken many a man and many a woman who have lost their balance completely in an altitude of admiration much below that in which Emilie von Schaumburg has passed her life.

KATE CHASE
(MRS. WILLIAM SPRAGUE)

There was a name in America a little more than a generation ago that possessed a power amounting almost to enchantment, the name of Kate Chase, a woman who holds a unique place in both the political and social history of this century. The story of her life, between the high lights of its early days and the shadows in which it closed, presents a peculiar succession of superlatives. There stands forth, however, through all its changes, one unvarying dominant feature which must strike us at once, whether we approach it in the spirit of a student or actuated merely by a passing curiosity: her absolute devotion to her father. Through our knowledge of him, therefore, we may, in a measure, penetrate those mists in which she is enveloped by the divided opinion of a public, some of whom loved and idealized her as a social divinity, while others hated and maligned her as an opposing political force. Thus may we reach some just valuation of a character that with its man's virility and woman's delicacy was in itself singularly enigmatical, of its incentives and ideals, and, indirectly, therefore, of the failure and disappointments which have left their indelible stamp upon the life of Kate Chase.

In her father, profoundly cultured and endowed with inexhaustible intellectual resources, she found the complete realization of her most exalted conception. She well knew the tenderness of the heart, the sensitiveness of the nature, he carried beneath that superb exterior of majestic and unapproachable dignity. She lived in close communion with the man, the angry rebuke of whose eye, says one of his biographers, no transgressor could support. She was the central feature of his remarkable home. Upon both of his daughters he expended a tenderness of devotion of which those who lived beyond the sphere of a personal acquaintance with him had no conception. Yet there have been inconspicuous women whom he might have fathered with more ultimate happiness to themselves than the remarkable daughter who is the subject of this sketch. Though he was a great man, winning justifiable distinction in every branch of the government of his country, he was yet not competent to cope with the problems which the life of such a woman as Kate Chase was continually presenting. In her presence alone, in the proud carriage of her regal head, there was that singular power that, while it drew forth the love and admiration that are the expression of a generous nature, likewise provoked in those of a baser order a hideous envy and hatred that assailed her even as a young girl. With his benignant belief in the universal goodness of mankind, Chase was singularly deficient in that knowledge of human nature which should have enabled him to throw about her that sort of aggressive protection which she peculiarly required.

There is one little incident in his life that throws light upon his own character, and upon the principle he pursued in directing his daughter. He was a man of the most delicate tastes and with a high appreciation of all the niceties of life. When he took the platform as an abolitionist, he was rotten-egged. Removing as much as possible of the offensive effusion with his handkerchief, he continued with what he was saying. He made no modification in his statements, nor did he close the window through which the unsavory missiles had made their entrance. As far as possible he ignored the occurrence.

The scandal-monger he treated with the same silent scorn, continuing the tenor of his life as if he had not been made aware of his existence. But while he, a courageous man, might walk fearlessly amid the storm of the angry nation that impeached Andrew Johnson, and, regardless of its threats, discharge the duties of his high office with that calmness that distinguished all the acts of his judicial career and adds to the glory of his name in the eyes of a later generation, his daughter, though no less courageous, was yet "too slight a thing" to defy the gossips of even one Western town. "Ah! little woman," she once said, laying her hand on the shoulder of one of her loyal friends to whom sorrow had come, "you, at least, have never made the mistake that I made. I never cared for the opinion or good-will of people. I ran my head against a stone wall. It did not hurt the wall but it has hurt the head." This is perhaps the nearest approach to self-justification she ever made for having essayed, with a man's independence, to live that most circumscribed life of a conspicuously beautiful woman.

Losing her own mother when she was scarcely beyond her infancy, and her step-mother before she had reached womanhood, and realizing early that she was treated in all things as his equal in years and understanding by the man whose superiority among his fellow-men she conceived to be beyond question, that spirit of self-reliance that is the natural outcome of all positive characters was intensified in her to an abnormal degree. While it gave her the fundamental qualifications of that leadership which she maintained with unparalleled brilliancy, it likewise, through lack of direction, developed that imperious tendency that proved so fatal to her own happiness.

She was the first child of Chase's marriage to his second wife, Eliza Ann Smith, and was named by her mother after his first wife, Katherine Garniss, for whom she had had a tender friendship and sincere admiration.

Of her birth, which occurred on the 13th of August, 1840, her father's journal contains the following record, a characteristic statement of the event from a God-fearing man whose knowledge, not only of children, but of the human family in general, was largely drawn from "judicious treatises."

"I went apart, and kneeling down prayed God to support and comfort my dear wife, to preserve the life of the child, and save both from sin. I endeavored to give up the child and all into His hands. After a while I went into the room. The birth had taken place at 2 A.M. on the 13th. After I had seen my wife and child, I went into the library and read a few pages in Eber's book on children, a judicious treatise. At last I became tired, and, though it was now day, lay down and slept awhile. The babe is pronounced pretty. I think it quite otherwise. It is, however, well formed, and I am thankful. May God give the child a good understanding that she may know and keep his commandments."

Of the early age at which Chase elected to test that understanding, his journal also furnishes an evidence. An entry therein, under date of November 24, 1845, about two months after her mother's death, shows the dawn of that remarkable intellectual intercourse which he maintained with his daughter till the end of his life. "This day," it reads, "has been marked by no extraordinary event. Rose, as usual of late, before sunrise; breakfasted with sister Alice and little Kate. Read Scriptures (Job) to little Kate, who listened and seemed to be pleased, probably with the solemn rhythm, for she certainly can understand very little; then prayed with her; then to town in omnibus, unshaven for want of time."

Within that same year he also recorded in his journal that he was teaching "dear little Kate to read verses in the Bible and listening to her recite poems."

Thus early, without any particular system probably, but wholly delightfully and under a most patient and winning master, begun the training of one of the most astute and brilliant minds with which a woman was ever gifted. She was keen and clever rather than profound, and her quick intelligence caught and assimilated the fruit of her father's years of study. Without having his absorbing love of books, she yet read much and forgot nothing. Chase used to say that in the miscellaneous reading of his boyhood, it was the pleasure he derived from a stray law-book that determined his choice of career. He pursued his profession with the ardor of real love, and his daughter imbibed from him a substantial knowledge of its technicalities. He used to go over his cases with her very much at first in the spirit in which he had read Job to her, later because he delighted in her understanding, and finally because she had become genuinely helpful to him.

Well ordered and simple was the atmosphere of the home in which she grew up. As was his custom from the time he established his own home till the end of his life, Chase called his household together at the beginning of every day to ask the blessing and protection of God. There were times, as seen from his journal, when little Kate seems to have been his only companion, yet the duty was never omitted.

She walked with him often to his office or to court in the morning, both in Ohio and after they had removed to Washington, talking sometimes of the things which interested her, but more frequently of those which engrossed him, for it was his life and his ambitions that gave color to both of their existences. He had taught her early his favorite games, chess and backgammon, which she often played with him in the quiet evenings they spent together, or, if it were out of doors, croquet or some simple childish game, for she was part of the relaxation of his lighter hours as she was the repository of all the confidences and hopes of his public career.

His third marriage, in 1846, to Sarah Ludlow identified him with one of the prominent families of Cincinnati; Israel Ludlow, his wife's grandfather, having been one of the founders of the city. Chase, himself, though an Eastern man, born in Cornish, New Hampshire, whence he had migrated on coming of age, was now one of the prominent figures of Cincinnati, a busy, prosperous lawyer, with excellent political prospects, which met their first realization when, in 1849, he was elected to the United States Senate. When he came, six years later, into the governorship of his State he was again a widower, and Kate, though less than fifteen years of age, took her place at the head of his home.

Accustomed since the dawn of memory to the most considerate attentions from the most kingly of men, she already carried herself with that noble grace that made her presence felt in every assemblage above that of all others, no matter how simply she clothed herself nor how quietly she deported herself.

Chase was the first of Ohio's governors to take up his official residence at Columbus. There, for a year, Kate went as a day pupil to Mr. Heyl's seminary, and later studied in the same institution music and languages, having for the latter an unusual gift. She spoke French faultlessly, especially after her long residence abroad, which came later in her life. Her German, while it was fluent, had always a suggestion of a foreign accent that in her seemed rather pleasing than otherwise. Her native tongue she wielded with rare perfection, and no one who has heard Kate Chase talk will ever forget the magic of her voice, the life her graphic and discriminating language breathed into every thought to which she gave utterance, while her wonderful eyes expressed, even betrayed, every emotion. An old man who served the Chase family for years in the capacity of coachman once paid a tribute to the delicacy and power of her verbal delineations which many a man of more enlightened intelligence more gracefully, perhaps, but not more aptly acknowledged. He said he knew no greater pleasure than to take Miss Kate off in the carriage with a book in her lap, and, without opening it, for her to tell him every word that it contained from beginning to end.

The positive element of her character had already manifested itself by the time she was sixteen years old. She was, at about that period, out of compliment to her father, elected to the secretaryship of a charitable organization of women, all of whom were many years her senior. During the course of one of the meetings, a physician, of whose services the body had availed itself, and who had given offence to some of its members, was made the object of an abuse as senseless as it was verbose. The spirit of opposition was more timorous in the feminine organization of that day than it is in those that have been the outgrowths of later years, and Kate Chase, alone, had the courage to rise in defence of the absent doctor. Appealing to the chair to silence the undignified outburst, she won on the spot an ill-will that followed her long after those who cherished it had forgotten its original cause. But her young life was full of a sweet homage, and such a graceful tribute as was conveyed in the knowledge that one of the ex-governors of the State had named the most beautiful rose in his famous garden after her, easily atoned for the ill-will of a few people which seemed, after all, but a ripple on the ever-broadening surface of her life.

The growing strength of the Republican party, which had been ushered into existence in her father's law offices in Cincinnati, under the inspiration of Dr. Gamaliel Baily, revealed possibilities to a man of Chase's ambition and ability that haunted him thenceforth till the end of his life. Kate knew intimately the strong men who formed the nucleus of that great party. She knew its aims and purposes, and was in possession of its secret history contained in her father's letters and journals and in her own memory of its inception and progress. Yet nothing ever wrung them from her, though she was frequently approached by magazine editors with offers that would have been a temptation even to those in less need.

Her father's ambition became the absorbing object of her life, developing in her, before she had reached her twentieth year, a scientific knowledge of politics that no woman, and few men, have ever surpassed. "I know your bright mind," once wrote Roscoe Conkling, in submitting to her a political problem, "will solve this quicker than mine." It has been said that many details of the campaign of 1884, against Blaine, who was Conkling's political enemy, were planned at Edgewood.

To an intellect naturally endowed with many masculine qualities, she added a woman's quicker wit and greater powers of divination and an overmastering love for the father in whose interest she exercised every faculty of her gifted mind.

When the first convention of the Republican party met at Chicago, in 1860, to nominate a president, Chase was a prominent candidate for that honor. His daughter accompanied him to Chicago, and thence for the first time her name went forth over the land. His confidence in her, his reliance upon her, treating her in all respects more as if she were a son than a daughter, her youth, and the purely feminine quality of her beauty rendered her unique and conspicuous.

The choice of the new party fell upon Abraham Lincoln, and Seward, who supported him and opposed Chase's pretensions, received later the recognition of his services when he was tendered the first place in Lincoln's cabinet. Chase was, however, elected for the second time to the United States Senate, where he took his seat March 4, 1861. Two days later he had resigned and gone into Lincoln's cabinet as Secretary of the Treasury. His home was thus transferred to Washington, where, going later on the Supreme Bench, he passed the balance of his days, neither he nor his children ever returning to Ohio. Chase was even laid to rest in Washington, and slept over thirteen years in beautiful Oak Hill. In the fall of 1886, however, his daughter had him removed to Ohio, that he might rest finally in the State that had been his home and that was associated with his early fame. There, a few months ago, she was laid by his side.

At the capital of the nation Kate Chase attained a social prestige never before enjoyed by so young a woman, and a political power which no woman before or since her day has ever possessed. Men of such eminence and distinction paid her the court of an homage so absolute that it would be difficult to estimate how much of her father's prominence was owing to her. Radiant as she was in her youth and beauty, the most lovable side of her character ever discovered itself in her tender, worshipping affection for him.

In September, 1860, some months before Chase left Ohio, there was unveiled at Cleveland, on the shores of the Lake to which his valor brought fame, a statue of Commodore Perry, many of the States sending deputations to do honor to his memory. At the head of Rhode Island's troops, in the military parade which opened the ceremonies of the day, rode the governor of that State, his alert young figure impressing itself upon all the spectators of the scene. That night, during the ball at the Kennard House which closed the event of the day, Colonel Richard Parsons presented him to Kate Chase. She was twenty years old at the time, and her slender young figure already possessed that beautiful symmetry that later found such unqualified favor in the eyes of Worth, that great modern connoisseur of the proportions of the female figure, drawing from him such commendation as he never accorded to any other woman. In a ball-gown showing the faultless contour of her neck and throat, and the exquisite poise of her lovely head, she was the revelation of a perfection which the human form rarely attains. Hazel eyes, auburn hair, and the marvellous whiteness of skin that usually accompanies this combination, a full, low, broad brow, mobile lips, a small, round chin, and a nose whose suggestion of an upward tilt added its own peculiar touch of piquancy to a face that was altogether charming rather than classically beautiful,—thus to the eye was Kate Chase, whose fame then superseded that of every woman in Ohio, and was shortly to surpass that of every woman of her generation in America. That she should hold the interested attention of not only one but several men for hours at a time was no unusual spectacle to the people among whom her belleship days had dawned early. Governor Sprague's devotion to her, however, on the night that he first met her, because he was a distinguished stranger and a man of prominence in his own State, and because there seemed, perhaps, in the entire situation many of the elements of romance, became at once a subject of interested comment.

The outbreak of the war took him to Washington. Still governor of his State, he had raised a regiment and equipped it at his own expense, for he was a man of immense wealth. His generosity, his patriotism, and his valor at Bull Run, together with his youth and the success of his political career, appealed to the enthusiasm of his countrymen. The news not only that he was to marry, but to marry a woman so universally idolized as was Kate Chase, heightened the effect his achievements had already produced upon the mind of the public. With a delicate sort of beauty and a somewhat clerical appearance that belied his reputation for military prowess, he had at the moment a fame quite equal to that of his bride. Their marriage, which took place at Washington on the 12th of November, 1863, was the social event of that turbulent period. All the details of the ceremony and of the reception which followed it, and which were planned by her, were on a scale of magnificence worthy of the woman whose advent into Washington had marked a new epoch in its social history.

She was the inspiration of the wedding-march composed for the occasion and played by the Marine Band. Under circumstances when a plain woman is an interesting figure, of what moment was not the appearance of one who could not, even on ordinary occasions, enter a church without her presence being in some mysterious way heralded to its remotest recesses so that every head involuntarily turned towards her! To those who beheld her on that day she was the beautiful realization of the ideal bride, and the life opening before her promised every possible happiness. The ceremony was witnessed by many men and women whose names were then household words when the eyes of the whole nation, watching the direction of the war, were fixed on Washington.

The first days of their married life were spent in Rhode Island, where Mr. Sprague built for his bride the beautiful home that was worthy of her lofty conceptions of a magnificent existence, Canonchet. It was one of the first of the palatial homes of that period, and of which this country now possesses so many, and the cost of its construction was unprecedented in the annals of a people incredibly rich in all life's comforts, but with their luxuriant tendencies for the most part still latent.

From the governorship of his State Sprague went into the United States Senate, and Kate Chase appeared in Washington as the wife of the youngest member of that body. The elegance of the new home there over which she presided, her husband's wealth and prominence, her maturer beauty, and the dignity with which she carried a matron's honors, all tended to bring her before the popular imagination in a more enchanting light than even the glories of her girlhood had done.

The birth of her first child, a son, was a matter of national interest, and the press of the day contained lengthy accounts of the dawn of the little life for which fate held in store so forlorn and tragic an ending. His christening robe was as elaborately described as if it had been that of a royal infant, and the figures of the handsome settlement made upon him were widely published.

Chase, however, still loomed the central figure of his daughter's life, for he continued to confide in her and take counsel with her in all that concerned him personally, as well as those measures that hand his name down as that of the greatest Secretary who ever presided in the Treasury Department. He was the intellectual power of Lincoln's cabinet, and though he contributed much to the success of his administration, there was small sympathy between the men personally, and being overruled by the President in some of the details of his department, Chase, in 1864, resigned his position as a member of the cabinet. Donn Piatt, who was one of the many young Ohioans to whom he was a shining example and a high ideal, said of Chase, that though he came in direct and intimate contact with Lincoln for three years, he never appreciated nor understood the man who could clear the heavy atmosphere of a cabinet meeting, called to consider some such stupendous proposition as the emancipation proclamation, by a hearty laugh, induced by the reading of a chapter from Artemus Ward. Lincoln, however, with his keen knowledge of human nature, discerned Chase's character more readily, and justly estimating the judicial qualities of his superior mind, he sent his nomination as Chief Justice of the United States to the Senate. It was immediately and unanimously confirmed by that body, and on the 6th of December, 1864, Chase, already a great man, entered upon the duties of that office, to which, with one exception, no name has given greater renown.

On February 24, 1868, the House of Representatives passed a resolution to impeach the President of the United States. During his trial, which terminated on May 26 of the same year, the country passed through a storm of violent political passion. Above the roar of an angry people and the threats which assailed him daily from all sections of the country, rose the august presence of the great Chief Justice, hearing but not heeding, feeling but not fearing their sting. Throughout the country there was no name more frequently heard during those days than that of Chase, and in Washington the President himself was not a more prominent figure. He followed his usual custom of walking to the court in the mornings, being frequently accompanied by the daughter who had so often been his companion in days when there had rested upon him no such burden as the grave question then in hand imposed. She forms one of the bright spots in the memory of that dark period, and he often lifted his eyes during the sessions of the court to refresh them with a glimpse of her face, in whose luminous sympathy there was inspiration. She sat in the gallery of the court chamber every day, surrounded always by men whose names go down in history among those of the foremost of their period and country,—Garfield, Conkling, Sherman, Carl Schurz, with Grant, the military idol of the hour, and Greeley, of editorial eminence.

The chief-justiceship of his country is generally supposed to fill the measure of a man's political aspirations. Upon Chase, however, the honors of his office imposed no such quietus, and in 1868 he again came forward for the Presidential nomination. As a Democrat, who had left his party only on the slavery question, he offered himself as a candidate for the nomination of that party. During the convention, which met in New York, Mrs. Sprague, more ably with her maturer mind and greater resources at her command than she had possessed in 1860, endeavored to bring about the realization of that dream of his whole public life. She was the first, however, to recognize the fact that the only platform on which he could secure the nomination asked more than he could honorably grant. Chase, watching the convention from a distance, confirmed her judgment.

Our history furnishes the names of three men whose ungratified ambition for the Presidency robbed them of their motive in life. Chase, however, survived his disappointment longer than either Webster or Blaine. He was, by nature, profoundly religious, and he endeavored to support with Christian heroism a blow whose crushing force undermined his very vitality. In 1870 he suffered a physical collapse, from which, however, stimulated by his remarkable will-power, he rallied so far as to be able to resume his duties on the Supreme Bench.

On March 23, 1871, the younger of his daughters, the child of his third marriage, was married to William Sprague Hoyt, of New York, a cousin of her sister's husband. Her wedding fastened another brilliant memory upon her father's Washington home at Sixth and E Streets. In the drawing-room, to which she had already brought so much fame, Kate Chase again stood beside her father, and their presence on that day constitutes to many people still living at the capital a memory-picture which, with all deference to the bride, yet supersedes all others of that eventful day. He was a magnificent man, over six feet in height, fair as a Saxon in coloring, with a fine head, clearly defined and well-made features, and a noble beauty of countenance; and she, robed in blue velvet of a turquoise tone, that brought out the glorious red-gold of her hair and the hazel of her eyes, with an Elizabethan collar rolling high about her patrician neck, tall, slender, and full of willowy grace. Perhaps the picture abides because it was the last before the falling of those lengthening shadows whence neither ever emerged.

On the 4th of March, 1873, Chase administered the oath of office to President Grant, and in May of the same year he occupied his chair as Chief Justice for the last time. A few days before the last on which he had felt able to go to court, his daughters and his grandchildren, whom he was accustomed to have much with him, being away from him, a sudden sense of loneliness, a yearning for some loving human presence, seems to have overpowered him, for he wrote to a young relative in New York that he was going to her to be for a while with her and her children. The day after he arrived, however, he went forth quietly and perhaps suddenly on that lonely voyage whence neither love nor the glow of any human presence may withhold us when it comes to be our turn. His body was sent back to Washington, where it arrived on Sunday morning, the 11th of May. There, clad in the awful dignity of death, he lay a day and a night within the bar of the court his living presence had rendered so illustrious. A simple wreath of white rosebuds, not more spotless than the life of him they crowned, was the last offering of the daughter to whom his death, so far as the world knew, brought her first sorrow.

She had, however, already come to the turn in her short road of happiness, and had confronted not alone the spectre of disillusion, which in itself would have been formidable enough to a woman of her temperament, but a substantial form of unhappiness that neither her pride nor a brave spirit that never quailed before it could long conceal. Her life has been so probed, so bared to the scrutiny of the world, that but little of its sorrow can be left to conjecture. That in one of her own deficiencies lay undoubtedly the cause of much of her unhappiness, while it served to render others less culpable, in no degree lessened the force of the misery it entailed upon her.

A knowledge of the proper value of money, abnormally developed in many, was totally lacking in Kate Chase. It appealed to her simply as a means of gratifying the needs and wishes of the moment, never as something to be hoarded for the satisfying of those of a future time. History contains the names of many men and women otherwise illustrious but born apparently with the same defect. The great wealth which came to her through her marriage she expended lavishly, not alone upon herself, but upon all whose happiness it was thus in her power to augment, for such princely natures are rarely selfish. She gave, all her life, frequently with a generosity wholly out of proportion to her means. Sprague probably did not realize her munificent tendencies till after the shrinkage in his fortune caused by the financial panic of the early seventies. They then became the cause of those fatal misunderstandings whence sprung later conditions of insupportable wretchedness. A divorce was granted her by the courts of New York, with permission to resume her maiden name, of which she availed herself some years later, when Sprague married again.

With her three daughters she retired to "Edgewood," a suburban home on the hills two miles north of Washington, which had come to her from her father and which is closely identified with the last years of both their lives. The house, an ample unadorned brick structure, stands on the brow of a hill overlooking the river, the city, and other hills in its vicinity. From her father she had also inherited an income somewhat smaller than might have been anticipated, for, although he had piloted the nation through the financial difficulties of the war, his personal finances were not flourishing. She found a legal adviser in a friend of her father's who had been a frequent visitor at Edgewood during Chase's lifetime, attracted thither both by his admiration for Chase and by the pleasure of that intercourse with his gifted daughter which he shared in common with many men of brilliant minds, few of whom ever came in contact with her without succumbing to a species of intellectual infatuation. With all the feminine graces that attract, however, she had many of a man's characteristics, and was capable of maintaining their intercourse at all times on an intellectual footing. The idle gossip of people who had no conception of the true loftiness of her soul, magnified by those who still felt and feared her political power, cast its blight upon her life. Silently scorning a world that so cruelly misinterpreted her, she voluntarily abandoned her place in its midst.

She took her children to Europe and there educated them, remaining as long as her resources would permit. When they were exhausted she came home. Edgewood gave her a sorry welcome. Everywhere, within and without, it showed signs of long neglect. Yet such as it was, it was home and full of memories of her father, whose portrait still hung in its broad hallway, and whose marble bust still adorned its library. There, too, were his beloved books that he had craved in his youth when he had turned from nature, which became, however, the tender solace of his ailing years, when he liked to be alone with her and his own thoughts, while he took long tramps over the hills. There, during the last three years of his life, he had pursued conscientiously that tranquil existence which he realized could alone prolong his days. To his daughter it was all that remained, and even it was slipping from her grasp. The men of her father's generation were gone, and she was as a stranger in the land that had once resounded with the echo of her name.

Edgewood was advertised for public sale. Something of its history crept into the press of the country. It struck a chord of memory and appealed to a class of men who had the means of gratifying their sympathies, men of a younger generation, but who venerated the memory of Chase and gave substantial proof of their veneration when they saved his home for the daughter he had so idolized.

She never evinced any desire to resume her place in that life in which she had once been a motive power.

Among those who knew her best she had loyal friends who loved and admired her to the end. Her servants had always worshipped her, and her own children frequently lost themselves in the spell her presence wrought.

Her eldest daughter went upon the stage, but married shortly after her début and abandoned whatever hopes she may have had of a histrionic career.

It was a singular fate that the last days in the life of a woman whose youth had scarcely known a moment's exemption from the pursuit of an admiring world should have been passed almost exclusively in the society of the gentle daughter, whom she ever lovingly called her little Kitty.

Two loyal canine friends followed in her footsteps to the last, studying all her movements with a vigilance that was not without its measure of flattery, and receiving from her a degree of consideration that she never failed to show to those of lowly condition in whom she recognized merit not always visible to a more conventional eye. Often the only sound about the lonely house that greeted an occasional visitor, was the friendly thump of the collie's tail against the porch floor, the shrill tone of inquiry in Chiffon's bark, or the melancholy wail of a violin. When Edgewood was finally closed and abandoned after Kate Chase's death, new homes were found for her two dog friends: for the collie, at Brookland, a suburb of Washington, and for the terrier, in the city itself. A few days later both had disappeared, and a boy who had occasion to go to Edgewood found them on the porch of the deserted house. It had been a long tramp for them, especially for the little terrier, which had had to thread its way across the city. Buoyed up with hope, they had arrived from their opposite directions only to realize that a life which at least had been happy for them, had come to its end.

With that rare courage with which she had borne all the other ills of her life, Kate Chase endured uncomplainingly the physical sufferings which its closing days brought to her, endeavoring at first to put them from her and with an aching body to go on heroically with her daily life as she had often done with an aching heart. She surrendered only a few days before the end, realizing then the unusual gravity of her condition, and in the small hours of the morning of the 31st of July, 1899, with her three daughters beside her, she at length closed her tired eyes tranquilly and without fear, to open them never again upon a world that had long since forgotten the once-cherished name of Kate Chase.

For the last few hours yet to be passed beneath the roof of Edgewood, they laid her in the room wherein her life had centred in both its glad and sad days,—her father's library. Its windows overlooked in the foreground the garden in which she had spent of late so many lonely hours, and in the distance, lying beneath the spell of a summer's day, the beautiful city, where regnant woman never held greater sway than she in whose quiet face there was now no trace either of the triumphs or the weariness of her life, but the contentment of grateful rest.

MATTIE OULD
(MRS. OLIVER SCHOOLCRAFT)

In the vicinity of one of Richmond's fashionable schools there was often seen on winter afternoons, in the late sixties, a group of young girls, who possessed far more than the usual attractiveness that belongs ever to health and youth. Two, at least, Lizzie Cabell and Mary Triplett, were singularly beautiful. The third, a tall, slender girl, with a trim figure, dark skin and hair, and eyes perhaps downcast as she stepped lightly along listening to her companions, a stranger would scarcely have observed. If, perchance, however, as they paused on a street corner for a last word before separating, the downcast eyes were lifted, there gazed from out their soft depths a spirit that transformed the entire face. They were truly the windows of a soul, looking out upon the world with a frankness that was irresistible, and with a certain caressing fondness for life that begot a kindred glow in all it looked upon. In her sweet voice there was the same tone of caress as it gave a parting utterance to some flashing thought to which, likely as not, she paid the tribute of that honest smile, whose witchery still lingers in many minds. As she continued her walk homeward many lifted hats greeted her passing, many eyes followed her, and her name was murmured among many groups, for, young as she was, Mattie Ould was already wandering in the pathway of a fame that was to make her later the idol of the people of the South.

Before she was beyond the tutelage of her old mammy the piquancy of her wit had established her title to popularity. It had, moreover, much of that audacity that had characterized the wit of another Virginia belle, Ann Carmichael, of Fredericksburg, who flourished fifty years earlier in the century. Conventionality was a term with which Mattie Ould had no concern. She was a genius, and with a spontaneity that was overwhelming she dared to give utterance to every sparkling thought that crossed her mind. She was a very small girl when she made that bright sally which connects her name with that of her father's friend, General Young.

A famous raconteur and bon vivant, and revelling in her gift for repartee, her father frequently had her brought forward as a little child to grace his stag dinners, seating her in the centre of the table, whence she sent forth such sallies of wit as captivated many a veteran dinner-giver and guest.

One evening, when she had kept up her amusing prattle until a later hour than usual, she went up to General Young, who was seated near her father, and stood beside him, resting her head against his shoulder. "Come, come," called her father, "it's time mammy was hunting you up, little sleepy head. General Young can't get on very well with you there." "No, no," insisted Mattie, dreading a summons of that autocrat, in whose presence there could be neither pleading nor protest; "don't send for mammy. I'm not sleepy. I was just trying an old head on young shoulders." She was quoted through all grades of Richmond life, and long before she had grown to womanhood a frequent question on many lips was, "Have you heard what Mattie Ould said?" Then every one listened to her latest bon mot, which was repeated till the whole city had heard and laughed. With a dash and esprit that were peculiarly her own, she had many masculine traits, an independence and a camaraderie that were irresistible.