THE LOVE STORY OF A PRESIDENT'S WIFE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2556, 11 March 1903, Page 66

THE LOVE STORY OF A PRESIDENT'S WIFE.

Mrs Grant was one of those wives of great men who live in shadow. It was probably what she herself liked best. But, all the same, she was not without a certain force of cliaracter ; and she had even a touch of tlie same" grim humour as now and then illumined the rather inarticulate utterances of her husband. I aw her in her old age, and then she was simply a stout, short, homely little woman, quite unpretentious in dress, manner, and appearance. But she w? at one time pretty enough to stir the deep chords in the silent, inscrutable, stern man whom she married. For the love story of Grant and his safe was something §i ag idvU,.

GENEKAL GKAXT. ! Grant first courted the young lady when he was a subaltern officer ttationed near St. Louis. She was then a good deal higher than Grant in station; for her father was a colonel, and fairly well to do. And Grant was a very hopeless wooer from the point of view of money ; not only did he have none in the present, but everything about him suggested an entire absence of the ability ever to make any. Indeed, there are few more remarkable instance, in history of the difference which opportunity makes in a man than the > story of General Grant. He really was 'never fitted for any trade but that- of the soldier; <and every time ha tried anything else he failed miserably. He was an unsuccessful tanner, he" was an unsucI cessful dealer in wood, and he was a careless, thriftless, jovial soul, whe had none of the grit or tenacity or love of a good bargain that go to make the successful trader in so go-ahead and pushful a country as America. Except that nobody could ever have taken that -strong-jawed man, with the keen, cold, though now and then , kindly grey-blue eyes, for a weak man, j there was plenty In the Grant of youth to suggest a character 1 of " the same, type as Rip Van Winkle of -romance and drama. - LINCOLN'S JOKE. '' ' It yt&s doubtless this' feature in his character which led to one of the crises -in his military career. It was one of the difficulties of Abraham Lincoln during the terrible Civil War that he was constantly being interviewed, button-holed, and worried "by every busybody in the country — whether as individuals or as corporations ; and some time after Grant had been appointed to the supreme command of the army of the North a deputation of parsons waited on the President to complain that Grant was a drinking man. LiriJ coin himself had all the stern sobiety of the 1 new West from which he came ; but he was ! in teetotalism, above all thing?, reasonable; and he always, besides, had a wonderful way of getting out of a light place by a joke -which threw all America into convulsions. And therefore, instead of denying the charge against Grant, he sug- ! gested that the deputation should give him ! the name of Grant's distiller; because if ' he could only get some of the same kind ' of whisky Grant drunk, he would, he said, 1 send a barrel to each of the other generals ; they might then manage to win battles as ] Grant was doing. I A nOSIAXTTC STORY. i It was possibly of all the flaws in poor Grant's character that the father of the young lady was thinking when he refused to countenance the future Mrs Grant's love. So the young lieutenant packed up his knapsack sadly and went off' to the wars in Mexico. There he fought with -distinction • and, by a lucky and romantic coinci- ! dence, he saved the life of the* brother of I the young lady. When -he returned to St. Louis, the young lady's position 'had undergone a disastrous change; for her father, after the American fashion, had become poor instead of rich. The young lady offered to release her fiance from his engagement, but Grant was one of those men of steady purpose in everything— in love as well as in war— and had no desire to be released. The final result was that the young couple were joined; that they started in life, rich in many things but never in money, and that until the Civil War broke out, poverty wis the ruling deity of their household. The marriage I was in 1848, the Civil War started in 1861, and so there were 13 years of miserable struggle. But the future which followed this inauspicious beginning made up for all this struggle. In the end Mrs Grant lived to be the guest of the Queen of England. THE SOLDIER IN BUSINESS. Grant, as ever3 r body knows, had also dark days at the close of his life. It was characteristic of his want of what tne Americans call the r 'money-sense ' that when he entered into business, after he had done with soldiering and with politics, he should have made a mess of it. There was one awful hour when the man who had saved the nation and who had been twice its ruler was a prisoner in a police cell in New York. - Tht, cloud passed, but not before it had given Grant a blow which perhaps helped to kill him. It was then that he settled down to write his autobiography, and that, with his book, he was abli to amaso an amount of money which provided for his wife. And finally she got a pension of £1000 a year ; and on that she lived till her death. , „".,, j The best thing 1 ever heard attributed to her was her answer to someone who proposed tc her that she should hay an operation performed to cure a slight squint she had in one eye. Her reply was that General Grant had fallen in love with her when she had the squint, in spite^of the snuint : and if she was cood enough for him with ncr squint, she didn't mind what she appeared to anybody else.