Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 August 1887 — WHITE-HOUSE WIVES. [ARTICLE]

WHITE-HOUSE WIVES.

Intellectually, Mrs. John Adams . Leads Them All. General Washington’s wife was a very excellent housekeeper, and the etiquette around her was fixed by certain young military aides of her husband like David Humphreys and Major Jackson, while the only woman at the -Cabinet who laid any pretensions of high breeding was the wife of .General Knox, a Boston girl, whose father had been a high tory at the breaking out of the revolution, whereas she. had run away with Knox, the book seller and captain of an artillery company. Knox was a man of ability, but of voluptuous nature, and his wife, too, became very stout and good natured in * time, and he* semi-official traditions as the daughter of a British stipendiary of considerable means rather operated to diminish than to expand the Executive circle. General Washington on public occasions led Mrs. Knox in the dance or to dinner, chiefly because Mrs. Knox, in his eyes, represented the best descent and educatian in his Cabinet. Hamilton’s wife had many children, and was not a society voman in her desires, though she was the qaughter of General Schuyler, who was the first Senator from New York State. Her husband’s intellect and her domestic duties absorbed all her ambition, and she is not regarded anywhere as stepping to the front or boosting any other woman out of the line. This Mrs. Knox, who seems to be a woman of as much intellect as style and confidence rather, was the notable woman of Washington’s Administration. Mrs. John Adams, like Mrs. Washington, was a housekeeper, and in her husband’s long absences she had given such attention to the farm and to the dairy and to paying the wages of the hands that she had become rather tight ■on money matters, and did not lay out the President’s salary to keep things lively. Intellectually it seems to be conceded that she led every President’s wife, and her letters can be read with as much charm to day as when they were first published, giving every American increased admiration for the good sense of the women of the time of the Revolution. Besides, Mrs. Adams has been a good deal to Europe, accompanying, both in the Legation. She had seen which constitutes society, but was not desirous to shine in it herself. Jefferson had no wife, and his daughters married young, and were a good deal absorbed with the financial straits of their husbands, who also were men of excessive personality, and not of the distributive and genial nature which constitutes a good host. Madison’s wife was a showy woman who, without having a great deal of mind, made things lively and stylish, and she probably remains the most (distinctive character in the history of the White House, though she had many troubles, her son being a fool and a spendthrift, and her husband was a rather cold man, and better fitted to appear in Congress than t 6 en tertain a crowd. He was peevish and timid, and always left to somebody else the troubles which arose out of the issues of his times, when every nation in Europe was at war, and all of them thought the United States ought to come in and be a partisan or be punished for its neutrality. The Americans were getting rich by having the carrying trade of Europe; and nobody is allowed to get rich without having rivals and pesterers. ■ TZ President Monroe was an uninteresting man, with a countenance which seems to this day full of commonplace. He wore homespun clothing and catered to the multitude which had seen society. His wife belonged to a class of Dutch New Yorkers who did not radiate, and the White House was a dull place, still keeping up that Southern tone which for three or four administrations and for thirty-two out of thirtysix years had distinguished it. The daughter of Mrs. Monroe was in all respects a Virginia girl, with Virginia surroundings. Then John Quincy Adams took his one term, and wife his was a Maryland woman of the Johnson family, living no great distance from the Capital. She possessed the Maryland virtues of hospitality and kindness, but it took a great deal of her time to keep her curious husband on good terms with himself, and she always had domestic troubles, one of her sons committing suicide. So the Southern tone continued at the White House, and when General Jackson came in for eight years he brought with him Kentucky and Tennessee ladies who had married his adopted son of were kin to his wife 'who had been reared in Kentucky. When the next man from the North, Van Buren, Occupied the White House . he was a widower, but he had most engaging sons and was himself the politest man in the Presidency, unless General Arthur be considered equally as agreeable. Arthur, however, had no 'great intellectuality, while Van Buren was a very substantial lawyer and wise manager, and he appreciated the growing social influence of New York, where he had been a poor Dutch boy surrounded by great families like the Livingstons, Van Rensellaers, Van Cortlandts and the Jays. The highest social breeding generally comes from below, where in-

tellect endeavors to please as it rises in the social scale. The absence of women, however, from the White House made Van Buren’s tern! comparatively unimportant in a social way, his sons , being still quite young, and all that strangers noticed there aas the absolute confidence with which Van Buren treated these boys, making men out of them from the outset. He had married his cousin, and consequently insanity developed in, come of bis children, though it may have originated in other causes, as now and then the strongest children are the offspring of cousins. John Van Buren was a powerful pan to the last day of his life. Tyler had two wives in the White House during the almost four years in which he succeeded to Harrison’s term. His first wife died before his influence became considerable, and his second wife was a handsome young girl of Long Island-New England stock, a Gardiner, whose marriage was somewhat analagous to that of Cleveland,except that the President had but recently lost his wife, and to some people who do not like second marriages, his reunion brought a cold chill. He was fifty-four years old when he married Julia Gardiner and he had married as early as 1813 his first wife, Letitia Christian, so that there was no great sentiment throughout the country upon a man who had been married thirty years taking to his bosom a mere girl. Mrs. Tyler is still living, and lives at Tyler’s old homestead somewhere on the James River. If she had the art to interest the society of that day it was premature for a Northern woman to be effective in a society which still continued to be overwhelmingly Southern. The President was himself a Virginian of an old office-holding family, and his methods and diet were probably more Southern than those of any of his predecessors. Besides, Mr. Tyler almost immediately quarreled with the political party which had elected him, and the White House was shunned by the Whigs, while the Democrats were all the while designing to win Tyler to their side and then to throw him overboard. President Polk married a sensible woman of the Tennessee stamp, where the practical and the religious and the social are blended in almost equal parts, so that the social element of character is merely one component instead of being the whole essence. They had no children, and Polk himself, was an anxious kind of a man, whose success had been rather beyond his expectations, and he was a pupil of the old Virginia school of politics, and kept in sight their methods and ideas. Mrs. Polk, however, was so much respected as a hostess and woman that after her husband’s death, which occurred almost immediately after he est the Presidency, gossip said that the Whig Secretary of State, John M. Clayton,whohad been many years a widower, was engaged to be married to her. Clayton has now been in his grave thirtyone years and he never married, while Mrs. Polk still lives, and from time to time is brought to the public attention by the distinguished visitors who go to see her. She has never rushed back to Washington like Mrs. Madison, who could not shake that city from her mind until nearly the end of her days, and she continued to hold a Dowager’s Court in the region of the White Hoase for a good many years. Gath. The Family Doctor. Buttermilk is now recommended for the cure of sallowness produced in the complexion by advancing age. It has long been popular for the prevention and cure of freckles and other injuries to the skin caused by wind and sun. For biliousness a plain diet of bread, milk, oatmeal, vegetables and fruit, with lean meat or fresh fish, is advised by the Medical and Surgical Journal. Exercise in Ibe open air helps. The The victim of aft acute attack will be righted by: First, abstinence; second, porridge and milk; third, toast, a little meat and ripe fruit, coming thus gradually to the solid food again. “Carbolic acid has been much overrated as a disinfectant,” says Robson Roose, M. D. “The spore of the microoganisms discovered in cases cf splenic fever have been found to be absolutely unaffected after lying for upward of three months in a 5 per cent, solution of carbolic acid in oil. It has been found that .yaceine matter mixed with carbolic acid in a solution still retains its efficacy.” Indian corn contains a large amount of nitrogen, has anti-constipating qualities, is easily assimilated, cheap and very nutritive. A doctor of note declares that a course .of Indian meal in the shape of johnny cake, hoe cake, corn or pone bread and mush, relieved by copious draughts of pure cow’s milk, to which, if inclined to dyspepsia, a little lime water may be added, will make a life, now a burden, well worth the living, and you need no other treatment to correct your nervousness, brighten your vision and give you sweet and peaceful sleep, ■ fl Is There Any Other Kind. " - Puck. # The girls who go into ecstacies over a new pattern for knit lace, who grow enthusiastic over making paper flowers, who read novels galore, who go to the opera whenever they get a chance, who wear boots a size too small for them’ who say “awful” forty times a day, etc.’ make just as good wives as the other kind, and don’tjou forget it