mounted without assistance, and
sat astride like a man. He was much embarrassed, but had no choice
except to escort her to the end of her journey.

The old lady who tells of this strange experience says that the young
woman several times visited Mr. Randolph, always dressed in white and
usually in the dead of winter. He always put her on a horse and sent
her away with a servant to escort her.

In his life there were but two women--his mother and Maria Ward. While
his lips were closed on the subject of his love, he did not hesitate
to avow his misery. "I too am wretched," he would say with infinite
pathos; and after her death, he spoke of Maria Ward as his "angel."

In a letter written sometime after she died, he said, strangely
enough: "I loved, aye, and was loved again, not wisely, but too well."

His brilliant career was closed when he was sixty years old, and in
his last illness, during delirium, the name of Maria was frequently
heard by those who were anxiously watching with him. But, true to
himself and to her, even when his reason was dethroned, he said
nothing more.

He was buried on his own plantation, in the midst of "that boundless
contiguity of shade," with his secret locked forever in his tortured
breast. "John Randolph of Roanoke," was all the title he claimed; but
the history of those times teaches us that he was more than that--he
was John Randolph, of the Republic.

How President Jackson Won
His Wife

In October of 1788, a little company of immigrants arrived in
Tennessee. The star of empire, which is said to move westward, had not
yet illumined Nashville, and it was one of the dangerous points "on
the frontier."

The settlement was surrounded on all sides by hostile Indians. Men
worked in the fields, but dared not go out to their daily task without
being heavily armed. When two men met, and stopped for a moment to
talk, they often stood back to back, with their rifles cocked ready
for instant use. No one stooped to drink from a spring unless another
guarded him, and the women were always attended by an armed force.

Col. John Donelson had built for himself a blockhouse of unusual size
and strength, and furnished it comfortably; but while surveying a
piece of land near the village, he was killed by the savages, and his
widow left to support herself as best she could.

A married daughter and her husband lived with her, but it was
necessary for her to take other boarders. One day the