Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 November 1884 — President Madison’s Love Making. [ARTICLE]

President Madison’s Love Making.

Sidney Howard Gray, in his “Life of Madison,” says: Madison seems never to have been a young man, but during his last winter in Congress, “youth finally overtook him, and he fell in love.” The damsel was 16. Madison was twice her age; she was “of more than usual beauty and of irrepressible vivacity. He was of extraordinary solemnity. He fell in love with her, but it was her father, Gen. William Floyd, asingnerof the declaration, who did the love making on her side. They became engaged. But there was a sentimental young clergyman who “hung round her at the harpischord," and who knew how to make love to some purpose. Mr. Gray says that when she dismissed her solemn lover “she sealed her letter—conveying to him alone, it may be, some merry but mischievous meaning—with a bit of rye dough.” It was a cruel blow, and Mr. Gray quotes a sympathizing letter from Jefferson: “I sincerely lament the misadventure which has happened, from whatever cause it may have happened. Should it be final, however, the world presents the same and many other resources of happiness, and you possess many within yourself. Firmness of mind and unintermitting occupation will not long leave you in pain. No event has been more contrary to my expectations, and these are founded on what I thought a good knowledge of the ground. But of all machines ours is the most complicated and inexplicable.” , Good sense is the master of human life.— Bossuet.