leaux at Mr. Edward Cooper's. Mr. Everett, however, was our best friend in the way of raising money.
I think Mr. Everett's contribution to this purchase amounted to nearly $50,000. I know that Mr. Robert Bonner sent him a check for $10,000 for writing some papers for the Ledger, all of which Mr. Everett contributed to the cause. Miss Mary M. Hamilton was made Regent of the State, and, assisted by the best people of New York, bravely carried the burden to her lamented death.
What a forlorn, old, neglected place Mount Vernon was then! but how soon it became cared for and clean! And now it is almost as it was when Washington lived there, if we can spiritually see the real furnishing of the past. The office of regent fell to the able hands of Mrs. Justine Van Rensselaer Townsend, a Colonial Dame, and fitted in every way to be the sponsor of such a trust. I rejoice that it is now the care of the women of America, but I am glad I remember the poor old place in 1848, when it had nothing to look at but the key of the Bastile, which nobody wished to take away or steal.
I worked with Miss Hamilton all these early years in favor of this patriotic object. Glad were we that it was paid for and safe before the dreadful days of the war, for we had other and more urgent need for all the money that any one could give.
Miss Anne Pamela Cunningham was aristocratic to a great fault, and so very "Secesh" in her sympathies that she would not speak to any Northern person after the war. Mrs. Ritchie, poor woman! after her striking career as a beauty in New York's best set, and her career as an actress in America and England, married Mr. Ritchie, of Richmond, went abroad during the war, and died in London poor, and inexpressibly saddened at the inevita-
