American literature -- Periodicals; Literature -- Periodicals
Physically, General Harrison has been described as "about six feet
high," straight and rather slender, and of "a firm, elastic gait,"
even in his last years. He had "a keen, penetrating eye," a "high,
broad and prominent" forehead, and "rather thin and compressed lips."
[Illustration: ANNA SYMMES HARRISON, WIFE OF PRESIDENT WILLIAM HENRY
HARRISON, AND GRANDMOTHER OF PRESIDENT BENJAMIN HARRISON.
From a painting in possession of the Harrison family.]
Mrs. Harrison was not with her husband at his death, and never became
an inmate of the White House. For that reason there hangs on its walls
no portrait of her, among those of the various ladies of the mansion.
She was the daughter of John Cleves Symmes, a scion of the Colonial
aristocracy. She loved better than the excitement of social life in
Washington the domestic peace of her North Bend home and the society
of her thirteen children, growing up in usefulness and honor. In her
youth she had been a great belle, and she remained a beautiful
woman even in her declining years. She was educated in that first
fashionable school for young women in America founded by Isabella
Graham in the city of New York. A sister, Polly Symmes, was also a
famous beauty. They went together to share their father's fortunes
in the unsettled West, and both found their fates in the hand of the
Miamis. Polly married Peyton Short, who became a millionaire.
Mrs. Harrison had been detained by illness from going with her husband
to witness the proudest event of his life, his inauguration; and she
had purposed following him to Washington later in the spring, when the
weather should be more favorable for the long, wearisome journey by
stage-coach. But, alas! before the spring fully opened, instead of
following him to Washington she was following his body to its silent,
stone-walled tomb, overlooking the wide sweep of the Ohio southward.
This noble woman lived to be eighty-nine and to see her grandson,
Benjamin Harrison, now ex-President, a general in the Union army.
She retained to the last much of her beauty and that sweetness of
disposition which has endeared her memory to those of her blood who
knew her best. She sleeps by the side of her husband in the old vault
at North Bend.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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