The weekly democratic statesman. [volume] (Austin, Tex.) 1871-1883, 1877-03-22
The Women who have Reigned
Durlng the Right Years OF Grants
Administration.

Eight years is good while to look
back upon. Children have grown up
and been married in the White House
within those years, and other children
in their turn have come to them. Cab
inets have been made and unmade.
The beautiful wives of Secretaries have
stood, smiling and dazzling in their
jeweled beauty, to receive with the
Presidents wife, and the proud ele
gantes of the nation have clasped the
dainty fingers Of these ladies of the cab
met, and envied them their charms and
their power. Presto they have fall
en- from their lofty place. The SOW
ereign spell of their beauty, or the
wondrous fascination of their art, has
no longer its power to call men to or
hurl them from positions of honor.
They no longer make ministers and az
point treasury clerks, They have COM
mitted the greatest of all offenses against
society - they have been found out,
and the women of fashion, who sought
them in the days of their short-hved
triumph, clothe themselves in an i'm
pregnable armor of virtue and turn the
stream of fashion from their doors.
These former ladies of the Cabinet may
still give balls and live IN elegance aud
hob-nob with diplomats and pursue a
life of artifice and intrigue, or they
may, being more unfortunate but far
less guilty, be condemned to life of
quiet and simplicity, lacking in friends
as well as in purse. They have, with
many others, shared the honors and
led the brilliant life that has marked
one of the gayest and the most corrupt
administrations that we have ever had.
Did the tinseled pleasure pay2 Was
the game worth the candie2 To many.
alas in the retrospect of the past eight
years does the tantalizing question
come.
TIE CHANGES OF EIGHT YEARS.
Great changes, indeed, have marked
the course of those years. We recall
many Of them, as fancy pictures the
bright faces that we used to see in
Washington society, and the sweet
voices of friends float back to us from
the past and their faces appear through
the mists of the years. Again We see
foreign ladies of diplomatic rank, in
their velvets and gold and cold, mock
ing beauty-women who have lived
their brief dream of power and passed
on to be forgotten, while others have
come in to take their places like them
to go out in their turn at the bidding
of imperial will.
We see once more fair face, with
its weird beauty, its glowing coloring,
and its eyes outdazzling the gems that
used to clasp the white throat upon
which the mildew of death has fallen.
We see another face, more naughty
and not less fair, upon which the dis
appointments of life and the loss OF
gold have scanned the tell.tale marks.
The lady who, not many years ago,
was the pride of Washington has con-
cealed her chagrin and her waning
beauty beneath the mask of artificial
pleasure and artificial youth that SO
many of her countrywomen don amid
the mocking gaiety of Partisan life.
Both of these women held official
position-the one as the wife of gov
ernor, the other as the daughter of q
man who filed a high place in the
nation, and this man, too, has gone,
like Sumner and Wilson, since the
long aged time when Grant came into
power.
THE ONE THAT REMAINS.
The cabinet changes pass in review
before our dazzied BRAN, until they
number so many that we can scarcely
count them all. But one man remains
of the list of names that was given to
the public almost eight years ago as
the cabinet of President Grant. Only
one lady of that cabinet still holds her
| trying pIAtsc- Wild e5yial storms b~vo
ragged around the cabinet that Grant
has tinkered over time and again,
sometimes mending, sometimes max
ing it worse, but Mrs. Fish has proud
ly, elegantly held her own, and braved
the fiercest and most malignant OF those
storms of scandal and intrigue, feeling
that she was in the cabinet but not ot
it. The weary social duties of the
years have weighed upon her and
whItened her hair and added wrinkles
TO her patrician face. She has led ar
arduous life, never deserting her post
almost if not always having been pres
| ent at every IeCeptlon THAT WIS Rlfei
at the White House, and cheerfully
unfailIngly extending the hospitality
of her own house to the officials, Il
the public and to her friends, and mos
scrupulousIy returning the thousand
of calls that were made upon her Oh
her reception days. Indeed, any o
the ladies of the cabinet who may hav
neglected this social duty and civilit,
have chanced to have been those upoI
whom public censure has fallen mos
heavily, and who have been hurle'
from the proud positions that they held
There are many who may envy tn
place that is filed by lady Of th
cabinet, more especially the exception
al position that the wife Of the Secre
tary of State holds, but the honor tha
goes with such a position, even du
, ing the most desirable sad high-tone
of administrations, can hardly pay fC
the excessive fatigue and responsible
that accompanies il.
MRS. VIsH's DUTIES.
Her position demands scarcely lei
diplomacy than that Of the 6ecretaI