“For more than a quarter of a century, my house has been the tent, and my home the battle-field.” This statement, which might have been used with propriety as figurative language by any officer who had been for more than a quarter of a century on active duty, was literally true of General Taylor’s experience. He was emphatically a hard-working officer: either from choice or accident, his public life was never varied by those terms of “official repose” which give officers a rest at Washington, at West Point, or at head-quarters in some large city. On the contrary, General Taylor, from the time he entered the army as a lieutenant until he laid aside his well-earned commission as a Major-General to assume the highest responsibility of Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, had never been out of what might be termed the severest frontier duties. He was known as having acquired the largest experience as an Indian fighter. He was alike the hero of the “Black Hawk,” as he was the most prominent officer in the Seminole war. Hence it is that Mrs. Taylor, more than any other mistress of the White House, had seen more army service, and passed through more varied frontier experiences; for she would never, under any circumstances, if she could avoid it, separate herself from her husband, no matter how severe were the trials resulting from wifely devotion. This heroic spirit, that gives such grace and beauty to useful qualities, carried her cheerfully to Tampa Bay, that she might be near her husband when he was endeavoring to suppress the wily Seminoles in the swamps and everglades of Florida; and as the long previous years in the western country made her familiar with the attributes of savage triumphs, so the final defeats that eventually secured our settlers a peaceful home on the rich plains of Mexico, and laid the foundation of the prosperity of the great West. In all this quarter of a century so feelingly alluded to by General Taylor, as the time when his house was a tent and his home the battle-field, it was seldom that Mrs. Taylor was not at his side, bearing her share of the hardships incidental to her husband’s life, and cheerfully attending to the duties which fell to her to perform. All this while the modest accommodations were acceptable, the log-cabin in winter, the tent if necessary in summer, with the coarse but substantial food of the soldiers, and often even this not in abundance. Deprived of the little elegancies which are so necessary for a woman’s comfort—separated from the society of her children, who were almost always away at school—nothing stood in the way of her fealty to her husband, and she was content thus to live.