Upon my return to our provincial little capital, then a community of six thousand souls, I found it thronging with gallants from every county in the State. The belles of the town, in preparation for the gayety of the legislative “season” of two months, were resplendent in fresh and fashionable toilettes. Escritoires were stocked with stationery suitable for the _billet-doux_ that were sure to be required; and there, too, were the little boxes of glazed mottoed wafers, then all the fashion, with which to seal the pretty missives. All the swains of that day wrote in verse to the ladies they admired, and each tender rhyme required a suitably presented acknowledgment. I remember, though I have preserved none save those my husband wrote me, several creditable effusions by Colonel McClung, one of which began: “Fearful and green your breathless poet stands,” etc. Shortly after my return from Columbus, I attended a ball where I danced with William L. Yancey, even then recognised for the splendour of his intellectual powers and his eloquence in the forum. I had heard him speak, and thought his address superb, and I told him so. “Ah,” he answered gayly, “if it had not been for one pair of hazel eyes I should have been submerged in a mere sea of rhetoric!” On the night of my dance with him I wore a white feather in my hair, and on the morrow a messenger from Mr. Yancey bore me some charming verses, addressed “To the lady with the snow-white plume!” I have said my strange premonitions regarding Mr. Clay were realised. Ten days after we met we were affianced. There was a hastily gathered trousseau selected in part by Mme. LeVert in Mobile, and hurried on to my aunt’s home. A month later, and our marriage was celebrated with all the _éclat_ our little city could provide, and the congratulations of a circle of friends that included half the inhabitants. It is sixty years since that wonderful wedding day, and of the maidens who attended me—there were six—and the happy company that thronged Judge Collier’s home on that crisp February morning when I crossed the Rubicon of life, all—even the bridegroom—have passed long since into the shadowy company of memory and the dead. That marriage feast in the morn of my life was beautiful; the low, spacious house of primitive architecture was white with hyacinths, and foliage decorated every available space. The legislature came in a body, solons of the State, and young aspirants for fame; the president and faculty of the State University, of which Mr. Clay was a favoured son; Dr. Capers, afterward Bishop of South Carolina, officiated, and, in that glorious company of old Alabamians, my identity as Virginia Tunstall was merged forever with that of the rising young statesman, Clement C. Clay, Jr.