It appeared that the girl was from Virginia and had run away from home to marry her lover, an honorably discharged soldier from Indiana. They had met by arrangement in Washington, but they were strangers there and very unsophisticated, and had little money to pay a minister or spend on hotel accommodations; so they had been wandering about the city for hours, not knowing where to go, and had taken refuge in the White House from the storm. They had no idea that they were talking to the President till he made himself known. With characteristic directness, he sent for a clergyman of his acquaintance and had the nuptial knot tied in his presence. Then he invited bride and groom to remain as his guests till the next day, when the weather cleared and they went their way rejoicing. Although Mrs. Lincoln was the titular head of the President’s household, the woman recognized as the social leader of the administration was Kate Chase, daughter of the Secretary of the Treasury. She was handsome, accomplished, and, after her marriage with William Sprague, the young War Governor of Rhode Island, rich as well. Mrs. Lincoln never liked her, but the President’s gift for peacemaking came into action here, and there was no public display of the coolness of feeling between them. Mrs. Sprague had a strong taste for politics, and her chief ambition was to see her father President; but Lincoln cut off that chance at the critical moment by making him Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Among the young and rising Congressmen with whom Mrs. Sprague was brought into contact during this period was Roscoe Conkling, a Representative from New York, who later became a Senator. He was the pink of elegance in person and attire, of stately and somewhat condescending manners, and master of the arts of verbal expression. They formed a firm friendship which lasted as long as both lived. Edgewood, the Chase home on the northern border of the city, was for many years one of the show places of Washington, and after Chase’s death Conkling procured from Congress an act exempting it from taxation as a tribute to the public services of its former owner. Another young Representative of whom Mrs. Sprague saw almost as much as of Conkling, but liked less, was James G. Blaine of Maine, a brilliant orator who in after years became Conkling’s most powerful adversary.