* * * * * * “It is a sad truth, but I know of no one now alive who remembers my mother in her youth. As late as 1861, there were several who had known her from infancy, but now they are all gone. We have not an uncle, or an aunt, of all our once numerous family, left on earth. The early portion of her life must be gleaned from the little incidents we, her children, may remember to have been recited concerning her, by those now dead. Apart from ourselves, there are those who may recall something of her married life, but these have been scattered by the events of the war far and wide asunder. Her character was so unobtrusive, and her personal deportment was so little influenced by a desire to shine before the public eye, that those alone best knew her who were intimately associated with the family as near relatives, or as private friends. Our older and two younger sisters are dead; our elder brother, and one younger, the one driven by the relentless fates to Alabama, and the other to California, and you, the sport of a similar fatality, together with myself, may recollect many little things sacred to filial devotion. The beautiful affection ever manifested toward her by every member of the family—by her uncles and her aunts, by her sisters and her brothers, her nephews and her nieces, and by her cousins, male and female—by all without exception—we know of, and can speak to the fact. It was with each one of them the unadulterated affection of the heart for piety, purity and goodness. There was nothing else to attract it, for their mere worldly circumstances were, in every direction, fully equal to her own, and in many instances superior in affluence to those she enjoyed. Nothing could have exceeded the devotional regard of her sister Anna, the owner of the paternal estate of Cedar Grove, and who in addition to her own inheritance, had derived a large fortune by marriage and the early death of her husband, Mr. Savage. And I have often heard aunt Elizabeth Douglas, her oldest sister, speak of her obedient disposition and truthfulness as a child, and of her almost surpassing beauty, grace, elegance, and refinement in riper years. We ourselves know how exemplary a wife and mother she was. One of the earliest memories I have of her is, that she taught me my letters out of the family Bible. Over and often can I recall her with a book in her lap, reading and reflecting, while her fingers were knitting or stitching for some of us; or while watching over us until a late hour of the night, in the absence of our father upon his public duties. “You know that these days of our childhood were days of struggle with our father, under heavy security obligations, and she had but one idea apart from conjugal piety and affection, and that was to save him from every care and every expense in her power.