The scandal-monger he treated with the same silent scorn, continuing the tenor of his life as if he had not been made aware of his existence. But while he, a courageous man, might walk fearlessly amid the storm of the angry nation that impeached Andrew Johnson, and, regardless of its threats, discharge the duties of his high office with that calmness that distinguished all the acts of his judicial career and adds to the glory of his name in the eyes of a later generation, his daughter, though no less courageous, was yet "too slight a thing" to defy the gossips of even one Western town. "Ah! little woman," she once said, laying her hand on the shoulder of one of her loyal friends to whom sorrow had come, "you, at least, have never made the mistake that I made. I never cared for the opinion or good-will of people. I ran my head against a stone wall. It did not hurt the wall but it has hurt the head." This is perhaps the nearest approach to self-justification she ever made for having essayed, with a man's independence, to live that most circumscribed life of a conspicuously beautiful woman. Losing her own mother when she was scarcely beyond her infancy, and her step-mother before she had reached womanhood, and realizing early that she was treated in all things as his equal in years and understanding by the man whose superiority among his fellow-men she conceived to be beyond question, that spirit of self-reliance that is the natural outcome of all positive characters was intensified in her to an abnormal degree. While it gave her the fundamental qualifications of that leadership which she maintained with unparalleled brilliancy, it likewise, through lack of direction, developed that imperious tendency that proved so fatal to her own happiness. She was the first child of Chase's marriage to his second wife, Eliza Ann Smith, and was named by her mother after his first wife, Katherine Garniss, for whom she had had a tender friendship and sincere admiration. Of her birth, which occurred on the 13th of August, 1840, her father's journal contains the following record, a characteristic statement of the event from a God-fearing man whose knowledge, not only of children, but of the human family in general, was largely drawn from "judicious treatises." "I went apart, and kneeling down prayed God to support and comfort my dear wife, to preserve the life of the child, and save both from sin. I endeavored to give up the child and all into His hands. After a while I went into the room. The birth had taken place at 2 A.M. on the 13th. After I had seen my wife and child, I went into the library and read a few pages in Eber's book on children, a judicious treatise. At last I became tired, and, though it was now day, lay down and slept awhile. The babe is pronounced pretty. I think it quite otherwise. It is, however, well formed, and I am thankful. May God give the child a good understanding that she may know and keep his commandments."