“Nothing can exceed the loneliness of this large and gloomy mansion, hung with black, its walls echoing only sighs and groans. My poor husband suffered dreadfully when he was told his mother’s eyes were constantly turned to the door, watching for him. He had left Washington to bring me and the children, at her request. She had every thing about her to awaken love. She was beautiful to the eye, even in her illness; her complexion was clear as an infant’s, her figure perfect, and her hands and feet were the most delicate I ever saw. She was refined and gentle in every thing that she said and did; and, above all, a pure and spotless Christian. She was my _beau ideal_ of a perfect gentlewoman. “The devotion of father and sons to her was most affecting. I don’t think I ever saw her enter a room that all three did not spring up to lead her to a chair, to arrange her footstool, and caress and pet her.” Mrs. Robert Tyler presided at the White House till June, 1844, when President Tyler was married to Julia Gardiner, of Gardiner’s Island, New York, a youthful beauty and _belle_. After many vicissitudes Mrs. Tyler entered the Catholic church, and now resides in Georgetown. Like Mrs. Madison, she has returned to the scenes of her early triumphs, and during the sessions of Congress may often be seen in the diplomatic gallery of the senate chamber, a stately black-eyed matron dressed in deep mourning. Mrs. Polk, intellectually, was one of the most marked women who ever presided in the White House. A lady of the old school, educated in a strict Moravian Institute, her attainments were more than ordinary, her understanding stronger than that of average women; but she obeyed St. Paul, and held her gifts in silence. She never astonished or offended her visitors by revealing to them the depth or breadth of her intelligence; nevertheless she used that intelligence as a power—the power behind the throne. Never a politician, in a day when politics, by precedent and custom, were forbidden grounds to women, she no less was thoroughly conversant with all public affairs, and made it a part of her duty to inform herself thoroughly on all subjects which concerned her country, or her husband.