A letter of Daniel Webster's, written about this time, reveals the seriousness of the situation. "It is odd enough," he wrote, "that the consequences of this dispute in the social and fashionable world are producing great political effects, and may very probably determine who shall be successor to the present Chief Magistrate." And they did. Jackson's power and popularity were such that he was in a position to dictate to his party the choice of his successor. His choice fell upon Van Buren, who had undoubtedly labored for him in the days of his bitter fight for the Presidency, and who had further and effectually endeared himself to his chief by his zealous defence of Mrs. Eaton, who in Jackson's eyes was not only a fair and beautiful woman, but the representative of oppressed womanhood. General Eaton was appointed governor to the Territory of Florida, and later he was sent as our minister to the court of Madrid. This ended Mrs. Eaton's social conflict. She was graciously received and universally admired in that land of aristocrats, and her long residence there and in Paris, whither she went before returning to this country, formed one of the happiest periods of her life. One of her daughters, the beautiful Virginia Timberlake, familiarly known among the men and women who were young with her, as "Ginger" Timberlake, married the Duke de Sampoyo and went to live in France, where, in turn, one of her daughters has recently married a son of the elder Rothschild. Margaret, Mrs. Eaton's second daughter, married one of the Virginia Randolphs. To the children by this marriage, deprived by death of both parents, Mrs. Eaton devoted many years of her life. General Eaton died in 1859. A third marriage contracted by his widow late in life, and subsequently annulled, was productive of much unhappiness in her home. On the 8th of November, 1879, she reluctantly gave up her hold on life, whose volume had held for her so few blank pages. In the presence of that foe which every woman fears most, slander, she had never retreated from the position she early determined to carry, and which circumstances proved she was well able to fill. She bore all with a sweet courage, feeling keenly, but not morbidly, the world's sting. Preserving to the end her wonderful elasticity of spirit, she went out from a life that had been one of alternate turmoil and triumph, beholding only its beauties and loving it to the last. "I am not afraid to die," she said, "but it is such a beautiful world to leave." CORA LIVINGSTON (MRS. THOMAS PENNANT BARTON) Cora Livingston was born in New Orleans, "the little Paris of America," on the 16th of June, 1806, the year of the great eclipse. Her father, writing to announce her advent to his sister in New York, said God had given him so fair a daughter that the sun had hidden its face.