“From their contemporary, Mrs. Madison, I have heard, that that winter when the sisters were going together into society, although on entering a room all eyes were turned on the younger, who became a centre of attraction, particularly to the gentlemen, that by degrees my mother’s vivacity and the charms of her conversation and manners drew around her a circle of admirers who delighted in listening to her even more than in looking at her beautiful sister. These two sisters lived in perfect harmony, linked together by the warmest mutual affection, as well as their common devotion to their father, whom both idolized. “My mother’s second visit to her father was in the winter of 1805–6. She had then lost her sister. My aunt left two children, Francis and Maria Jefferson; the little girl was only a few months old and did not long survive her mother. Francis passed that winter under my mother’s care, his father being still in Congress. One of my brothers was born that same winter; the first birth which took place in the White House. He was called James Madison. Mrs. Madison was an intimate and much valued friend of my mother’s, and her amiable, playful manners with children attracted my sisters and myself and made her a great favorite with us. Among my childish recollections is her ‘running away with us,’ as she playfully expressed it, when she took us away with her in her carriage, to give us a drive and then take us home with her to play with two of her nieces near our ages, and lunch on cranberry tarts. My oldest sister, Anne, completed her fifteenth year that winter, and was not yet going into society; but my mother permitted her to go to a ball under the care of a lady friend, who requested that my sister might go to her house to dress and accompany her own daughter near her age to the ball. My sister excited great admiration on that occasion. She had a ‘remarkably classic head,’ as I remember hearing an Italian artist remark at Monticello upon seeing her there after she was the mother of several children. Her hair was a beautiful auburn, and her complexion had a delicate bloom very becoming to her, and with the freshness of fifteen I can readily imagine how strikingly handsome she was. My mother, accompanied by Mrs. Cutts—the mother of Gen. Richard D. Cutts—went to the ball at a later hour. She was very short-sighted, and seeing my sister on entering the ball-room she asked Mrs. Cutts, ‘Who is that beautiful girl?’ Mrs. Cutts, much amused, answered, ‘Why, woman, are you so unnatural a mother as not to recognize your own daughter?’