The reigning lady of the White House, at this time, was General and Mrs. Taylor’s youngest daughter, Elizabeth, or, as she was familiarly and admiringly called, “Betty Bliss.” She entered the White House at the age of twenty-two, a bride, having married Major Bliss, who served faithfully under her father as Adjutant-general. Perhaps no other President was ever inaugurated with such overwhelming enthusiasm as General Taylor—and the reception given his youngest child, who greatly resembled him, and who, at that time, was the youngest lady who had ever presided at the White House, was almost as overpowering. The vision that remains of her loveliness, shows us a bright and beaming creature, dressed simply in white, with flowers in her hair. She possessed beauty, good sense and quiet humor. As a hostess she was at ease, and received with affable grace; but an inclination for retirement marked her as well as her mother. Formal receptions and official dinners were not to their taste. Nevertheless, these are a part of the inevitable penalty paid by all who have received the Nation’s highest honor. Society, in its way, exacts as much of the ladies of the White House, as party politics do of the men who administer state affairs in it. A lack of entertainment caused part of the universal discontent, already voiced against the hero President, whose heroic ways were naturally not the ways of policy or diplomacy. The second winter of President Taylor’s term, the ladies of his family seemed to have assumed more prominently and publicly the social duties of their high position. A reception at the President’s house, March 4, 1850, was of remarkable brilliancy. Clay, Calhoun, Webster, Benton and Cass, with many beautiful and cultured women, then added their splendor to society in Washington. The auguries of a brilliant year were not fulfilled. Amid the anguish of his family, President Taylor died at the White House, July 9, 1850. When it was known that he must die, Mrs. Taylor became insensible, and the agonized cries of his family reached the surrounding streets. Dreadful to the eyes of the bereaved wife were the pomp and show with which her hero was buried. After he became President, General Taylor said, that “his wife had prayed every night for months that Henry Clay might be elected President in his place.” She survived her husband two years, and to her last hour never mentioned the White House in Washington, except in its relation to the death of her husband.