The young wife, thrifty and industrious all day, worked patiently and hopefully as night brought her pupil again to his studies, and punctually completed her womanly duties that she might be ready for the never-varying rule of their lives. Much of latent powers he owed to her indefatigable zeal and encouragement, and he never forgot those evening hours years ago when the scintillations of natural genius first began to dawn, which ultimately converted the tailor boy into the Senator, and subsequently into the President of his country.
Year after year she watched him as he rose step by step, and always as willing and earnest as when in life’s bright morn they were married.
The later years of Mrs. Johnson’s life were crowned with the honors her husband’s successes had won, but the story of her younger days is fraught with most interest to all who can appreciate true worth and genuine greatness of soul.
In her girlhood she was the purest type of a Southern beauty, and like her mother was very graceful and agreeable in her manners. I have heard persons say that her mother was the handsomest lady in all that region of country, and her old neighbors stoutly maintained that Mrs. Johnson was the image of her. Her extreme modesty denied the imputation that she was the belle of the county.
While their means increased as time passed, and the caroling of their little children gladdened their home, Mr. Johnson received his first substantial proof of the confidence of the community in which he lived in his election as “alderman.” How intense must have been the joy of the good wife as she saw her pupil progressing in a career he was so well fitted to occupy!
At this time their residence was situated on a hill just out of Greenville, simple and plain in its surroundings, yet the resort of the young people of the village. The college boys, as they passed to and fro on errands, always stopped to enjoy a chat with their “Demosthenes,” and were ever welcomed by the genial, frank manners of the gentle wife.
Fresh laurels crowned the alderman’s brow when he was chosen Mayor, and for three terms he filled the position with credit, winning for himself an enviable reputation for honest deeds and correct principles.
Little has been written of Mrs. Johnson, mainly from the fact that she always opposed any publicity being given to her private life, and from the reluctance of her friends to pain her by acceding to the oft-repeated requests of persons for sketches of her. In a conversation held with her while she was in the White House, she remarked “that her life had been spent at home, caring for her children, and practising the economy rendered necessary by her husband’s small fortune.”
An impartial writer cannot be swayed by such natural and creditable sentiments, nor is it just that a woman who was the means of advancing her husband’s interests so materially, and who occupied the position she did, should be silently passed by. She deserved, as she received from all who were fortunate enough to know her, the highest encomiums; for by her unwearying efforts she was a stepping-stone to her husband. Patient and forbearing she was universally liked, and if she had an enemy it was from no fault of hers, nor did she number any among the acquaintances of a lifetime.
Like Mr. Johnson she had very few living relatives; her children having neither aunts nor uncles, and being deprived of both grandmothers while they still were young. Mrs. Johnson’s mother died in April, 1854, and his parent lived until February, 1856; each having been the object of his tenderest care, and living to see him holding the highest position his native State could bestow. There was not two years’ difference in the deaths of these two mothers, and it was the unspeakable happiness of their children to know that as the wick burned low, and the lamp of time went out, all that peace and plenty could devise for their happiness they received, and their departure from earth was rendered calmly serene by the assurance that their work was well done and finished.