In the year 1777, when General Burgoyne entered the valley of the Hudson, the wife of General Schuyler hastened to Saratoga, her husband's country seat, to secure her furniture. "Her carriage," writes the biographer of Brant, "was attended by only a single armed man on horseback. When within two miles of her house, she encountered a crowd of panic-stricken people, who recited to her the tragic fate of Miss M'Crea,[96] and, representing to her the danger of proceeding farther in the face of the enemy, urged her to return. She had yet to pass through a dense forest within which even then some of the savage troops might be lurking for prey. But to these prudential counsels she would not listen. 'The General's wife,' said she, 'must not be afraid!' and, pushing forward, she accomplished her purpose."
While Thomas Crittenden, the first Governor of Vermont, was discharging the functions of an executive, he was waited upon one day, in an official capacity, by several gentlemen from Albany. The visitors were of the higher class, and accompanied by their aristocratic wives. At noon the hostess summoned the workmen from the fields, and seated them at the table with her fashionable visitors. When the females had retired from the dinner table to an apartment by themselves, one of the visitors said to the lady of the house, "You do not usually have your hired laborers sit down at the first table do you?" "Why yes, madam," Mrs. Crittenden replied, "we have thus far done so, but are now thinking of making a different arrangement. The Governor and myself have been talking the matter over a little, lately, and come to the conclusion that the men, who do nearly all the hard work, ought to have the first table,—and that he and I, who do so little, should be content with the second. But, in compliment to you, I thought I would have you sit down with them, to-day, at the first table."[97]
At the Fair held in Castle Garden, in the autumn of 1850, was exhibited a large Gothic arm-chair, backed and cushioned with beautifully wrought needle work in worsted. The needle work was from the hands of Mrs. Millard Fillmore. It was setting a noble example for the wife of a President to present her handiwork at an industrial exhibition; and, if the decision of the three Roman banqueters in regard to their wives, was correct—they preferring the one who was found with her maidens preparing loom-work,—Mrs. Fillmore must be ranked among the best of wives.
During the last war, Major Kennedy of South Carolina, wished to raise recruits for his troop of horse; and accordingly went to Mrs. Jane White, who had several hardy sons, and made known his wants. She was a true patriot, like her husband, who was an active "liberty man" in the war of '76: hence she was ready and anxious to further the Major's plans. Her sons being at work in the field, excepting the youngest, she called the lad, and ordered him, in her broad Scotch-Irish dialect, to "rin awa' ta the fiel' an' tell his brithers ta cum in an' gang an' fight for their counthry, like their father afore them."[98]
Among the fine sentiments quaintly uttered by the old dramatic poet, Webster, are these: