She was very affable and agreeable, in an unemotional way—the proper manner, of course, for her. I imagine no one could take a liberty with her then, but I risked the experiment some years ago when we spent a summer together at Bar Harbor. A handsome widow, with silver hair, she was even more distingué than she had been in the White House. I recalled, to her genuine amusement, two incidents of her life there. When she took her place as mistress of the Executive Mansion, the President had given her but one rule for her conduct: never under any circumstances to accept a present. "Think of my feelings," she had said to me, "when the lovely lacquered boxes and tables the Japanese Embassy brought me were turned from the door, to say nothing of the music-boxes and these fascinating sewing-machines they have just invented."
A party was once made up for a visit to Mount Vernon. Mr. Augustus Schell of New York accompanied Miss Lane. He was a fine-looking fellow and very much in love with her. As they walked along the banks of the Potomac, she picked up a handful of colored pebbles. Mr. Schell requested them of her and put them in his pocket. He took them to Tiffany, had them beautifully polished, set with diamonds, and linked together in a bracelet, and sent them as "a souvenir of Mount Vernon" to Miss Lane for a Christmas gift.
She carried them for a week in her pocket, trying to get her own consent to give them up. The more she looked at them the better she liked them. One day the President was in fine spirits. He liked to rally her about Lord Lyons, which she did not fancy overmuch. But this time she humored him, and at last ventured to say, "Uncle Buchanan, if I have a few pretty pebbles given me, you do not object to my accepting them?"
"Oh, no, Miss Harriet! Keep your pebbles! Keep your pebbles," he exclaimed, in high good humor.
"You know," Miss Lane said, in telling me the story at the time, "diamonds are pebbles."
There was an impression that she never condescended to the rôle of a coquette, but I could testify to the contrary.
Mr. Porcher Miles, Congressman from South Carolina, was one of her train of devoted admirers. He accompanied me once to an evening reception at the White House. Miss Lane stood in front of the flower-trimmed divan in the Blue Room. Mr. Miles and I paid our respects, lingered awhile, and, having other engagements, sent for our carriage.
As we stood at the door waiting, he talked of Miss Lane's beauty and charm—"Look at her where she stands! Is she not the personification of a high-bred lady from head to foot?"
Miss Lane perceived we were talking about her,—and while she gave her right hand to the arriving guests she passed her left behind her and plucked a spray of mignonette. We saw her beckon a servant, who immediately found us, and gave the flowers to Mr. Miles, "with Miss Lane's compliments."
I repeated these two little stories to her when her head was silvered,—less by age than by sorrow,—and awoke one of those rare moonlight smiles which her friends remember so well.