Elizabeth Lawrence passed her early youth in Burlington, where she pursued the study of Greek and Latin, to the mild astonishment of the community. Over her father's library table in the Lawrence mansion, still existing impervious to the encroachments of time, she chatted as a girl with the Tory satirist Jonathan Odell. She must have imbibed some of his sarcasm, for in later years her loquacious tongue was barbed with a wit almost Walpolian in its acrid cleverness. At nearby Philadelphia she met the famous Peggy Chew, and formed an intimacy with Anne Willing, better known as Mrs. William Bingham. The "dazzling Bingham" she made the subject of some animated verses, entitled,-- "LINES ON MRS. BINGHAM'S RECALL OF A SUPPER INVITATION. "Just in from the country, with nothing to wear, At Bingham's to-night I am bidden repair. My one silken pelisse is all in a tangle, And I know I have lost my Parisian bangle: Not a whif of hair-powder to light up my head-- Methinks 'twould be better to get into bed! My slippers the parrot has quite eaten up-- Oh! why am I bidden to come in to sup? Now, Rebecca, do try make the child stop its wailing; At the thought of the company courage is failing! There's a chair going past and a coach with a clatter. If I go as I am--pray, what does it matter? Here give me some Rose-Bloom to ease up my face, And a patch on my chin would give it a grace. My new brilliant necklace, my white turkey wrapping, Ah, now I am ready; but who is that tapping? A word from the Binghams--you say a postponement: An illness--alas, 'tis a hurried atonement, With nothing to wear and nothing to eat! Come blow out the candles and gaze on the street." There are very few records of this remarkable woman's girlhood still extant. Her brother John, for whom she cherished a strong attachment, was born after her marriage to Mr. Michael Kearny, "the beloved noble Michael," who erected her Perth Amboy cottage. There she lived as "the scribbling Mrs. Kearny, occupying the highest seat on Parnassus," a power in her world. Argus-eyed she evidently was, for nothing seems to have escaped her facile quill. There was scarcely a subject too great or too small for her to digress upon, and she wrote in the morning of "the shameful performance of certain gentlemen in Congress" and at night of "the sorrow she felt on finding a slave under the influence of pernicious rum." [Illustration: A LADY OF OLD AMBOY]