engaged. But it was the father rather than the daughter who
admired the suitor; for the older statesman better understood the
character, and better appreciated the abilities, of his young colleague,
and predicted a brilliant career for him. The girl's wisdom was of
another kind. The future career which she foresaw and wanted to share
belonged to a young clergyman, who--according to the reminiscences of an
aged relative of hers--"hung round her at the harpsichord," and made
love in quite another fashion than that of the solemn statesman whom
the old general so approved of. It is altogether a pretty love story,
and one's sympathy goes out to the lively young beauty, who was thinking
of love and not of ambition, as she turned from the old young gentleman,
discussing, with her wise father, the public debt and the necessity of
an impost, to that really young young gentleman who knew how to hang
over the harpsichord, and talked more to the purpose with his eyes than
ever the other could with his lips. There is a tradition that she was
encouraged to be thus on with the new love before she was off with the
old, by a friend somewhat older than herself; and possibly this maturer
lady may have thought that Madison would be better mated with one nearer
his own age. At any rate, the engagement was broken off before long by
the dismissal of the older lover, much to the father's disappointment,
and in due time the young lady married the other suitor. There is no
reason that I know of for supposing that she ever regretted that her
more humble home was in a rectory, when it might have been, in due time,
had she chosen differently, in the White House at Washington, and that
afterward she might have lived, the remaining sixteen years of her life,
the honored wife of a revered ex-President. Perhaps, however, she smiled
in those later years at the recollection of having laughed in her gay
and thoughtless youth at her solemn lover, and that, when at last she
dismissed him, she sealed her letter--conveying to him alone, it may
be, some merry but mischievous meaning--with a bit of rye-dough.[7]

Mr. Rives gives a letter from Jefferson to Madison at this time, which
shows that he stood in need of consolation from his friends. "I
sincerely lament," Mr. Jefferson wrote in his philosophical way, "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 re