erely as an
adjunct to her husband. But she liked them all, and she was most
benignant in her reception of the several newspaper scribes, principally
of her own sex, who sought an interview for the sake of copy. She
withheld nothing in regard to her person, talents, household, or tastes
which would in her opinion be effective in print. She had a photograph
of herself taken in simple, domestic matronly garb to supplement those
which she already possessed, one of which revealed the magnificence of
the attire she wore at the President's Reception; another portrayed
Littleton's earnest bride, and still a fourth disclosed her as the
wistful, aspiring school-mistress on the threshold of womanhood. These,
and the facts appropriate to them, she meted out to her biographers from
time to time, lubricating her amiable confidences with the assertion
that both she and her husband felt that the people were entitled to be
made familiar with the lives of their public representatives. As the
result of her gracious behavior, her willingness to supply interesting
details concerning herself, and her flattering tendency to become
intimate on the spot with the reporters who visited her, the newspaper
articles in most cases were in keeping with Selma's prepossessions.
Those which pleased her most emphasized in the first place her
intellectual gifts and literary talents, intimating delicately that she
had refused brilliant offers for usefulness with her pen and on the
lecture platform in order to become the wife of Congressman Lyons, to
whom her counsel and high ideals of public service were a constant
stimulus. Emphasized in the second place her husband's and her own pious
tastes, and strong religious convictions, to which their constant church
attendance and the simple sanctity of their American home bore
testimony. Emphasized in the third place--reproducing ordinarily a
sketch and cut of her drawing-room--her great social gifts and graces,
which had made her a leader of society in the best sense of the word
both in Benham and in New York. A few of the articles stated in
judicious terms that she had been twice a widow. Only one of them set
this forth in conspicuous and opprobrious terms: "Her Third Husband! Our
Chief Magistrate's Wife's Many Marriages!" Such was the unsympathetic,
alliterative heading of the malicious statement which appeared in an
opposition organ. It did no more than recall the fact that she had
obtained a divorce from her