Everyone in Washington now thronged to see the beautiful things, and many purchased specimens from among them, among others Mrs. Davis. By a curious turn of fate, the majority of these treasures were acquired by Mrs. Senator Yulee, who was so devoutly religious that her piety caused her friends to speak of her as “the Madonna of the Wickliffe sisters!” The superb furniture of the whilom hostess was carried to “Homosassa,” the romantic home of the Yulees in Florida, where in later years it was reduced to ashes. Of the Wickliffe sisters there were three, all notably good as well as handsome women, with whom I enjoyed a life-time friendship. One became the wife of Judge Merrick, and another, who dearly loved Senator Clay and me, married Joseph Holt, who rose high in Federal honours after the breaking out of the war, having sold his Southern birthright for a mess of Northern pottage. For several years before her death, Mrs. Holt was an invalid and a recluse, yet she was no inconspicuous figure in Washington, where the beauty of the “three graces” (as the sisters of Governor Wickliffe were always designated) was long a criterion by which other belles were judged. Mrs. Mallory, the wife of Senator Yulee’s confrère from Florida, was particularly a favourite in the capital. The Mallorys were the owners of great orange groves in that lovely State, and were wont from time to time to distribute among their friends boxes of choicest fruit. Of our “mess,” Congressman and Mrs. Curry were least frequently to be met with in social gatherings. Mrs. Curry, who was a Miss Bowie, devoted her time wholly to her children, apparently feeling no interest in the gay world about her, being as gentle and retiring as her doughty relative (the inventor of the Bowie knife) was warlike. Mr. Curry was an uncommonly handsome man, who, in the fifties and early sixties, was an ambitious and strenuous politician. He died early in 1903, full of years and honours, while still acting as the General Agent of the Peabody fund. Nor should I fail to recall the lovely Mrs. Clopton, wife of one of Senator Clay’s most trusted friends, Congressman David Clopton. She joined our “mess” late in the fifties, and at once added to its fame by her charm and beauty. She was a sister of Governor Ligon of Alabama. One of her daughters married the poet, Clifford Lanier, and another became the wife of Judge William L. Chambers, who for several exciting years represented our Government at Samoa.