to fulfil the
statements of Cooper concerning the domesticity of the American wife. In
1824, Mrs. Seaton wrote of Mrs. John C. Calhoun: "You could not fail to
love and appreciate, as I do, her charming qualities: a devoted mother,
a tender wife, industrious, cheerful, intelligent, with the most
perfectly equable temper." Mrs. Crawford, wife of the secretary of war
during Monroe's administration, openly regretted that her husband had
entered public life, since the duties of the position would make inroads
upon the domesticity which she valued as the dearest thing in her
existence. On the other hand, these simpler tastes among so many of the
higher ladies of the land did not produce lack of culture. John Randolph
was no lover of women, and no believer in their entrance into the domain
of politics. When on one occasion they crowded the floor as well as the
gallery of the Senate to hear him pour forth the rich flood of his
eloquence, and he was annoyed by some whisper, he suddenly paused in his
speech, pointed his long index finger at the gallery, and demanded: "Mr.
Speaker, what, pray, are all these women doing here, so out of place in
this arena? Sir, they had much better be at home attending to their
knitting!" Yet even John Randolph, misogynist as he was, thus wrote in
1833 t Edward Livingstone concerning the latter's acceptance of the
position of minister to France: "In Mrs. Livingstone, to whom present my
warmest respects, you have a most able coadjutor. _Dowdies_, dowdies
won't do for European courts, Paris especially. There and at London the
character of the minister's wife is almost as important as his own. It
is the very place for her. There she would dazzle and charm, and surely
the salons of Paris must have far greater attractions for her than the
yahoos of Washington."

The last words show Randolph's estimate of Washington society in the
mass; but never was there a more prejudiced or bitterer man than he of
Roanoke, and his general verdict must not be implicitly accepted.

In 1836 there occurred at the capital an event which was in itself of
note, as being contrary to the theories of the day, and which is yet
more noteworthy as the first instance in America of a practice which in
our day has become common,--the entrance of a woman into journalism.
Mrs. Anne Royall founded a paper in the capital, giving it the somewhat
suggestive name of the _Huntress_, and dedicated it chiefly to the
promulgation of fashionabl