and at each
successive entertainment Mrs. Eaton was the honored guest, who led
the contra-dance, and occupied the seat at table on the right of
the host. Some respectable ladies were so shocked by her audacity
that they would leave a room when she entered it. She was openly
denounced by clergymen, and she found herself in positions which
would have covered almost any other woman in Washington with shame.
Mrs. Eaton, who apparently did not possess a scruple as to the
propriety of her course, evidently enjoyed the situation, and used
to visit General Jackson every day with a fresh story of the insults
paid her. Yet she gave no evidences of diplomacy nor of political
sagacity, but was a mere beautiful, passionate, impulsive puppet,
held up by General Jackson, while Mr. Van Buren adroitly pulled
the strings that directed her movements.

Mr. Calhoun, whose wife was foremost among those ladies who positively
refused to associate with Mrs. Eaton, said to a friend of General
Jackson's, who endeavored to effect a reconciliation, that "the
quarrels of women, like those of the Medes and Persians, admitted
of neither inquiry nor explanation." He knew well, however, that
it was no women's quarrel, but a political game of chess played by
men who were using women as their pawns, and he lost the game.
Van Buren and Eaton next tendered their resignations as Cabinet
officers, which General Jackson refused to accept; whereupon the
Cabinet officers whose wives declined to call on Mrs. Eaton resigned,
and their resignations were promptly accepted. The whole city was
in a turmoil. Angry men walked about with bludgeons, seeking
"satisfaction;" duels were talked of; old friendships were severed;
and every fresh indignity offered his "little friend Peg" endeared
her the more to General Jackson, who was duly grateful to Van Buren
for having espoused her cause. "It is odd enough," wrote Daniel
Webster to a personal friend, "that the consequences of this dispute
in the social and fashionable world are producing great political
effects, and may very probably determine who shall be successor to
the present Chief Magistrate."

Junius Brutus Booth was the delight of the Washington playgoers in
the Jackson Administration. His wonderful impersonations of Richard
III., Iago, King Lear, Othello, Shylock, and Sir Giles Overreach
were as grand as his private life was intemperate and eccentric.
He was a short, dumpy man, with features resembling t