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."