am Winston Seaton, wife of the editor of
_The National Intelligencer_, "have received a check which will prevent
any further attentions to the President's family, in the murder of
Decatur." The invitations already sent out for an entertainment in honor
of the bride and groom by Commodore David Porter, father of the late
Admiral David D. Porter, U.S.N., were immediately countermanded.

I never had the pleasure of knowing my mother-in-law, Mrs. Maria Hester
Monroe Gouverneur, as she died some years before my marriage, but I
learned to revere her through her son, whose tender regard for her was
one of the absorbing affections of his life and changed the whole
direction of his career. At an early age he was appointed a Lieutenant
in the regular Army and served with distinction through the Mexican War
in the Fourth Artillery. On one occasion subsequent to that conflict,
while his mother was suffering from a protracted illness, he applied to
the War Department for leave of absence in order that he might visit her
sick bed; and when it was not granted he resigned his commission and
thus sacrificed an enviable position to his sense of filial duty. Many
years later, after my husband's decease, in looking over his papers I
found these lines written by him just after his mother's death:--

"A man through life has but _one_ true friend and that friend generally
leaves him early. Man enters the lists of life but ere he has fought his
way far that friend falls by his side; he never finds another so fond,
so true, so faithful to the last--_His Mother_!"

Mrs. Gouverneur was somewhat literary in her tastes and, like many
others of her time, regarded it as an accomplishment to express herself
in verse on sentimental occasions. One of my daughters, whom she never
saw, owns the original manuscript of the following lines written as a
tribute of friendship to the daughter of President John Tyler, at the
time of her marriage:--

TO MISS TYLER ON HER WEDDING DAY.

The day, the happy day, has come
That gives you to your lover's arms;
Check not the tear or rising bloom
That springs from all those strange alarms.

To be a blest and happy wife
Is what all women wish to prove;
And may you know through all your life
The dear delights of wedded love.

'Tis not strange that you should feel
Confused in every thought and feeling;
Your bosom heave, the tear should steal
At though