Living as we did on a spur of the Blue Ridge, in the most salubrious part of the State, one would have thought there was no necessity for going elsewhere during the hot months. But my mother, near half a century ago, thought differently. About the first of July we always started on what I used to call, when a girl, our "pilgrimage." In an old-fashioned coach, round as an apple and lifted high in the air--which in my childish fancy was ever associated with the one the fairy made from Cinderella's pumpkin--with a fat old coachman, and horses as fat and lazy as he, we would make the distance of twenty miles a day. We accomplished about half this in the cool morning, stopping at some country tavern during the heat of the day, and driving another ten miles amid the shades of evening. Behind us, at a respectful distance, trundled our baggage-wagon. We had relations in every county, as all true Virginians were bound to have; and we would tarry for days with them on our journeys, with as little regard to reaching a definite place at a definite time as if a thousand years remained to us. One of these summer jaunts, when I was a girl, on which I first saw Mr. Madison, is particularly impressed on my memory. We sojourned several days at his lovely seat, Montpelier, Mrs. Madison being an old friend of my mother's. The venerable ex-President was then much emaciated, and I thought was failing rapidly. He lay most of the time on a couch in the middle of the room adjoining the dining-room, wrapped in a black silk dressing-gown elaborately quilted, and did not look larger than a boy of thirteen. At dinner the first day I was attacked by ague, and Mrs. Madison, leading me into the next room, placed me on his couch. I awoke an hour or two after in a high fever, and the look of his face which has outlived all others in my recollection is that of amusement which lighted the wan features on beholding the expression of bewilderment and confusion which overspread mine as I opened my eyes, half delirious, and found him lying beside me.