The General's family, beyond himself and me, was made up of his nephew Donalson, the latter's wife, and the portrait-maker, Earl; not an extensive circle, truly, and one to be soon contracted by the desertion of two, as you shall presently hear. We were still in process of that mild wrangle with our new abode which must ever precede a last adjustment, when, like a clap of thunder from a sky without a cloud, the General's niece--she who was our Lady of the White House--came upon him. There lowered something formidable and gloomy in the mien of the young woman as she entered the room, and because no towering force of character had distinguished her theretofore, this cloudy something was the more to be observed. I should have said, too, the social lines were already being set for and against our pretty Peg, and this visit of the General's niece was somewhat in the nature of a blow from the enemy's side. “What is it, my dear?” asked the General, glancing up from his conversation with me. “Uncle,” she said, much in the manner of a starling which whistles a tune that has been taught it, “Uncle, I am here to tell you that I can not call upon Mrs. Eaton. I will receive her, since this is your house, and you its master. But call on her in return, I can not.” “Hoity toity!” quoth the General, “and now where did you learn these bad manners?' “It is my duty to myself, Uncle; there is not a lady in Washington, beginning with Mrs. Calhoun and going down to the least among us, who will call on Mrs. Eaton; therefore, I can not call on her.” “Then you might better go back to Tennessee, my dear,” said the General. And the niece and her husband went. The word “Calhoun,” had not, however, escaped the General. It was forever cropping up in manner and form most sinister, that word Calhoun; and in the entire crusade of venom waged upon our Peg, it seemed on the lips of everyone with whom the exigencies of the hour threw us into speech, from the immortal Pigeon-breast to the General's very niece. “The Calhoun interest,” remarked the General, when his young relative had retired in wrath to pack her trunks, “would appear to be headquarters for the foe.” The General said “foe” and meant it; for he was one whose eyes were in his heart and saw ever his enemy in the enemy of his friend. It was then I took occasion to lay out to the General in particular, not alone the plan of Calhoun to seize a presidency; not alone his leadership in that war of politics then mustering forces over Nullification and a state's right to secede, and which in the next Congress gave birth to the debates between Webster and Hayne; but I went a step beyond, and exhibited the hidden enmity of Calhoun which was leveled at himself, and had hunted his destruction as far away as the Seminole campaign, when Calhoun was in Monroe's cabinet as Secretary of War.