In 1858 a wonderful affair came to pass. It was Mrs. Senator Gwin’s fancy dress ball, written of, talked of, far and wide. I did not get to attend this. My costume was prepared—a Spanish cavalier, Mrs. Casneau’s doing—when I fell ill and had with bitter disappointment to read about it next day in the papers. I was living at Willard’s Hotel, and one of my volunteer nurses was Mrs. Daniel E. Sickles, a pretty young thing who was soon to become the victim of a murder and world scandal. Her husband was a member of the House from New York, and during his frequent absences I used to take her to dinner. Mr. Sickles had been Mr. Buchanan’s Secretary of Legation in London, and both she and he were at home in the White House. She was an innocent child. She never knew what she was doing, and when a year later Sickles, having killed her seducer—a handsome, unscrupulous fellow who understood how to take advantage of a husband’s neglect—forgave her and brought her home in the face of much obloquy, in my heart of hearts I did homage to his courage and generosity, for she was then as he and I both knew a dying woman. She did die but a few months later. He was by no means a politician after my fancy or approval, but to the end of his days I was his friend and could never bring myself to join in the repeated public outcries against him. Early in the fifties Willard’s Hotel became a kind of headquarters for the two political extremes. During a long time their social intercourse was unrestrained—often joyous. They were too far apart, figuratively speaking, to come to blows. Truth to say, their aims were after all not so far apart. They played to one another’s lead. Many a time have I seen Keitt, of South Carolina, and Burlingame, of Massachusetts, hobnob in the liveliest manner and most public places. It is certainly true that Brooks was not himself when he attacked Sumner. The Northern radicals were wont to say, “Let the South go,” the more profane among them interjecting “to hell!” The Secessionists liked to prod the New Englanders with what the South was going to do when they got to Boston. None of them really meant it—not even Toombs when he talked about calling the muster roll of his slaves beneath Bunker Hill Monument; nor Hammond, the son of a New England schoolmaster, when he spoke of the “mudsills of the North,” meaning to illustrate what he was saying by the underpinning of a house built on marshy ground, and not the Northern work people. Toombs, who was a rich man, not quite impoverished by the war, banished himself in Europe for a number of years. At length he came home, and passing the White House at Washington he called and sent his card to the President. General Grant, the most genial and generous of men, had him come directly up. [Illustration: W. P. Hardee, Lieutenant General C.S.A.]