When Pettrick the sculptor was stabbed by some midnight assassin, as soon as the President heard of it he hurried to his studio, where the deed was perpetrated, and not only ordered him to be provided for, but saw him attended to himself.
One Sunday just after dinner, there were several loud ringings of the front door bell, when the President, who had left a gentleman alone in the dining-room, returned and said: 'They have it through the city that I have been shot!'
'With paper bullets of the brain, I suppose they mean, Mr. President,' said the guest.
'No,' replied the President, 'with leaden bullets from a pistol. Come, walk out on the portico, and smoke your cigar.'
The President with his guest walked out on the portico, whither soon came thronging a crowd of the President's friends, who, hearing the report through the city, had hastened to the White House to learn if there was any truth in the story.
There was no truth whatever in it; but every body present was struck with the President's indifference to the report, and the absence of all curiosity on his part as to how it originated. He only remarked: 'If I am shot at, gentlemen, it will be more in malice than in madness;' and apologizing, by saying that daily confinement required that he should take exercise, he rode away in his carriage unattended.
As a husband and a father, President Tyler is a model for any man; and particularly for public men, who too often neglect their families. For a very long time the lady of the President was in feeble health, which terminated in her death last summer. It was a beautiful moral spectacle to see the President, amidst all the cares and perplexities of his exalted station, beset by so many detractors, so devotedly watchful of Mrs. Tyler's declining condition. In the midst of the veto days, when engaged in the most animated political conversation, if Mrs. Tyler chanced to be in the room, the President's eye every minute wandered to her, in affectionate regard; and when she left the room upon the arm of her son or daughter, he would watch her anxiously and in silence till she withdrew, and would often remain in melancholy thoughtfulness for minutes afterward, forgetful of the conversation and those around him.
In bringing up his family, Mr. Tyler has been fortunate. His daughters, except the youngest, Alice, who is at school, are happily married, and his sons who are grown, Mr. Robert and Mr. John Tyler, are gentlemen of honor, manliness, and intellect; and Tazwell, his youngest son, is a lad of promise. Miss Elizabeth Tyler, who is now Mrs. Waller, and living with her husband in Virginia, was much admired in her bellehood when in the White House. Her unpretending and gentle manners inspired with admiration all who approached her.
'Well,' exclaimed a fashionably ambitious young lady one day to a gentleman who was attending her on a visit to Miss Tyler, 'if I were Miss Tyler, I'd blaze my bellehood out as long as my father was President, and make the most devoted lover in christendom bide my beck in the crowd.'
The fair Virginian had no such ambition, and thereby proved herself worthy of the manly heart that has won her.