He was a powerful man, with a forcible way of speaking, which he retained to the end of his life. When he was stumping his State in the summer of 1856, being already in his seventieth year, he was cautiously viewed one morning through the crack of an open door by two anti-Bentonites. He was standing at the moment and speaking in a vigorous way that appalled his surreptitious visitors. "Good God," ejaculated one, "we shall have to fight him these twenty years!" He was a striking figure, with heavy black hair and side whiskers, and during all the years that he was in the Senate, like some of his illustrious successors, he never changed the style of his dress. His vehemence was expended in public. In his family life he was as gentle as he was devoted. Jessie, the second of his four daughters, and the subject of this sketch, was born at the home of her maternal grandfather, Colonel James McDowell, near Lexington, Virginia. She grew up partly in the picturesque atmosphere of St. Louis, then almost wholly a French settlement, and partly in Washington, where Benton's home was considered one of the most interesting in the city, owing to the cultivated wife and daughters who gave it character and individuality. Intermingled with her school-days she had her little day of belleship, during which the two most notable events were a dinner at the White House, given by President Van Buren for his young son, and the wedding of Baron Bodisco, the Russian minister, at which she appeared as first bridesmaid. The bride, Miss Williams, was one of her school-mates, and a girl of sixteen, while the bridegroom was over sixty. The details of the ceremony, however, were all harmoniously arranged by him, and included eight bridesmaids between the ages of thirteen and sixteen, and eight groomsmen of his own period of life. With one of the most distinguished, James Buchanan,--then in the United States Senate, and but recently returned from the Russian mission,--walked Jessie Benton, fourteen years of age, and in her first long dress. Judged by his last will, this Russian January seems to have been an unselfish husband, for he therein expressed the wish that his still young wife should marry again and be as happy herself as she had made him. The Van Buren dinner was a more or less memorable event, though the White House was familiar ground to Jessie Benton. During Jackson's administration she used frequently to go there with her father, for the old soldier-President was notably a lover of children. He liked to run his long fingers through her soft curls, while he talked with his old friend Benton, unwittingly giving the curls many a twist as he warmed to his subject, all of which the little girl bore heroically, finding ample recompense in her father's praise, which was sure to follow the ordeal.