When she began her reign in Washington, steamboats were the wonder of the world; railroads undreamed of; turnpike roads scarcely begun; the stagecoach slow, inconvenient, and cumbersome. The daughter of one senator, who wished to enjoy the delights of the new capital, came five hundred miles on horseback by her father’s side. The wife of a member rode fifteen hundred miles on horseback, passed through several Indian settlements, and spent nights without seeing a house in which she could lodge. Under such difficulties did lovely women come to Washington, and out of such material were blended the society of that conspicuous era. When Mrs. Madison entered the President’s house, the strife between the democratic and republican parties was at its highest. Washington, above all party, had yet declared himself the advocate of the unity and force of the central power. Jefferson had been the President of the opposition, who wished the supremacy of the masses to overrule that of the higher classes. On these contending factions Mrs. Madison shed equally the balm of her benign nature. Not because she was without opinions, but because she was without malignity or rancor of spirit. Born and reared a “Friend,” she brought the troubled elements of political society together in the bonds of peace. She possessed, in pre-eminent degree, the power of intuitive adaptation to individuals, however diversified in character, and the exquisite tact in dealing with them, which always characterizes the true social queen. She loved human beings and delighted in their fellowship. She never forgot an old friend, and never neglected the opportunity of making a new one. She banished from her drawing-room the stately forms and ceremonials which had made the receptions of Mrs. Washington and Mrs. Adams very elegant and rather dreadful affairs. She was very hospitable, and a table bountifully loaded was her delight and pride. The abundance and size of her dishes were objects of ridicule to a Foreign Minister, even when she entertained as the wife of the Secretary of State, he declaring that her entertainments were more like “a harvest home supper than the entertainment of a Cabinet Minister.”