Another story of Mrs. Madison illustrates the real kindness of her heart. Two plain old ladies from the West, halting in Washington for a single night, yet most anxious to behold the President’s famous and popular wife before their departure, meeting an old gentleman on the street, timidly asked him to show them the way to the President’s house. Happening to be an acquaintance of Mrs. Madison, he conducted them to the White House. The President’s family were at breakfast, but Mrs. Madison good-naturedly came out to them wearing a dark gray dress with a white apron, and a linen handkerchief pinned around her neck. Not overcome by her plumage, and set at ease by her welcome, when they rose to depart one said: “P’rhaps you wouldn’t mind if I jest kissed you, to tell my gals about.” Mrs. Madison, not to be outdone, kissed each of her guests, who planted their spectacles on their noses with delight, and then departed. Poverty compelled Martha Jefferson to part with Monticello after her father’s death, and the same cruel foe forced Mrs. Madison to sell Montpelier in her widowhood. A special message of President Jackson to Congress, concerning the contents of a letter from Mrs. Madison, offering to the government her husband’s manuscript record of the debates in Congress of the convention during the years 1782-1787, caused Congress to purchase it of her, as a national work, for the sum of thirty thousand dollars. In a subsequent act Congress gave to Mrs. Madison the honorary privilege of copyright in foreign countries. The degree of veneration in which she was held may be judged by the fact that Congress conferred upon Mrs. Madison the franking privilege and unanimously voted her a seat upon the Senate floor whenever she honored it with her presence; two privileges never conferred upon any other American woman. The last twelve years of her life were spent in Washington, in a house still standing on Lafayette square. Here, on New Year’s day and Fourth of July, she held public receptions, the dignitaries of the nation, after paying their respects at the White House, passing directly to the abode of the venerable widow of the fourth President of the United States—a woman who had honored her high station by her high qualities more than it could possibly honor her. She died at her home, Lafayette square, Washington, July, 1849, holding her mental faculties unimpaired to the last. In her later days, while suffering from great debility, she took extreme delight in having old letters read to her, whose associations were so remote that they were unknown to all about, but yet which brought back to her her own beloved past. She delighted, also, in listening to the reading of the Bible—and it was while hearing a portion of the gospel of St. John that she passed in peace into her last sleep.