One of the memorable events of her young life was the visit of Lafayette to America. It enters into the record of many lives that covered that period, some of which were far spent and some so tenderly youthful that the little marquis saluted them only by proxy, delegating somebody else "to kiss the babies" while he shook countless outstretched hands, for he was as complaisant as he was artistic. He wrote to the widow of his old friend, General George Walton, expressing a wish to see her during his stay in Mobile. Her health was not sufficiently robust, however, to admit of her undertaking a journey with the few comforts that were then possible. She sent her daughter-in-law and her granddaughter to represent her, intrusting to Octavia a miniature of her husband, the better to recall his features to Lafayette's memory and to enable him to realize how strong was the resemblance the little girl bore to her illustrious grandfather. She talked to him in French, so that the interview was to Lafayette a time of delightful relaxation, and it was with genuine reluctance that he saw it draw to a close. To Octavia it was the first in a long series of interesting memories associated with Mobile, whither her family removed from Florida in the year 1835. In the latter State, however, she spent the happy period of her young womanhood; hence Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley, in some lines addressed to her at a later period, calls her "Sweet Rose of Florida." Pensacola was the naval station of the gulf coast, and the constant coming and going of men-of-war, with the attendant festivities of balls of welcome and farewell banquets, were a distinctive feature in the social life of that portion of the Territory. Octavia Walton, the governor's daughter, cultivated intellectually to a degree that made her the appreciative listener and intelligent talker among men of science and of letters, and with a personal beauty that made her the admiration of every one, occupied from her earliest girlhood a position of unusual prominence. Long runs with her brother in the invigorating air of the coast had given to her supple figure, with its graceful curves, that erect carriage which she always retained. Her head was well poised, and her soft brown hair parted simply above a broad brow of unusual whiteness and transparency. In her blue eyes there lurked a suggestion of the cool and quiet depth of a forest, while her mouth, that feature which, says Oliver Wendell Holmes, we all make for ourselves, denoted the sweetness of her character. These were the visible forms of the loveliness of the young Octavia Walton, whom Frederika Bremer, the Swedish novelist, called "the magnolia flower of the South."