prominent people, especially guests from Maryland. Mr. Maltby Gelston
told me at the time of this visit that Mrs. Harper was the only child of
a Signer then living. It is probable that he spoke from positive
knowledge, as he was an authority upon the subject, having married the
granddaughter of Philip Livingston, a New York Signer. A few years
later, when I was married in Washington, D.C., I was deeply gratified
when Miss Harper came from Baltimore to attend my wedding. The marked
attentions paid to her by Caleb Cushing, then Attorney-General under
President Pierce, were the source of much gossip, but she seemed
entirely indifferent to his devotion. I once heard him express great
annoyance after a trip to Baltimore because he failed to see her on
account of a headache with which she was said to be suffering, and he
inquired of me in a petulant manner whether headaches were an universal
feminine malady. Like her mother, she lived to a very advanced age and
when she departed this life the world lost one of its saintliest
characters.

One of the most attractive cottages in Newport at the time of my second
visit was occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Henry Casimir de Rham of New York. It
was densely shaded by a number of graceful silver-maple trees. Mr. de
Rham was a prosperous merchant of Swiss extraction, whose wife was Miss
Maria Theresa Moore, a member of one of New York's most prominent
families and a niece of Bishop Benjamin Moore of New York.

The social leaders of Newport at this period were Mr. and Mrs. Robert
Morgan Gibbes, whose winter home was in New York. Mr. Gibbes, who, by
the way, was a great-uncle of William Waldorf Astor, was a South
Carolinian by birth and had married Miss Emily Oliver of Paterson, New
Jersey. They lived in a handsome house, gave sumptuous entertainments,
and had an interesting family of daughters, several of whom I knew quite
well. One well-remembered evening I attended a party at their house
which was regarded as the social affair of the season. It made a lasting
impression upon my mind owing to a trivial circumstance which seems
hardly worth relating. It was the first time I had ever seen mottoes
used at entertainments, and at this party they were exceptionally
handsome. The one which fell to my share, and which I treasured for some
time, bore upon it a large bunch of red currants. These favors were
always imported, and a few years later became so fashionable that no
dinner or supper table was