building a church for her-a curious little brick edifice - on his own farm; the smallest church, I suppose, in the United States. Of all the churches I ever saw, this is the plainest and simplest in its construction. It looks like a very small schoolhouse; it has no steeple, no portico, and but one door; and the interior, which contains forty little pews, is unpainted, and the floor is of brick. On Sundays, the congregation consisted chiefly of the general, his family, and half a dozen neighbors, with as many negroes as the house would hold, and could see through the windows. It was just after the completion of this church that General Jackson made his famous reply to a young man who objected to the doctrine of future punishment.

"I thank God," said this youth, "I have too much good sense to believe there is such a place as hell."

"Well, sir," said General Jackson, "I thank God there is such a place."

"Why, general," asked the young man, "what do you want with such a place of torment as hell?"

To which the general replied, as quick as lightning: —

"To put such rascals as you are in, that oppose and vilify the Christian religion."

The young man said no more, and soon after found it convenient to take his leave.

Mrs. Jackson did not live to see her husband President of the United States, though she lived long enough to know that he was elected to that office. When the news was brought to her of her husband's election, in December, 1828, she quietly said:

"Well, for Mr. Jackson's sake" (she always called him Mr. Jackson), "I am glad; for my own part, I never wished it."

The people of Nashville, proud of the success of their favorite, resolved to celebrate the event by a great banquet on the 22d of December, the anniversary of the day on which the general had first defeated the British below New Orleans; and some of the ladies of Nashville were secretly preparing a magnificent wardrobe for the future mistress of the White House. Six days before the day appointed for the celebration, Mrs. Jackson, while busied about her household affairs in the kitchen

of the Hermitage, suddenly shrieked, placed her hands upon her heart, sank upon a chair, and fell forward into the arms of one of her servants. She was carried to her bed, where, for the space of sixty hours, she suffered extreme agony, during the whole of which her husband never left her side for ten minutes. Then she appeared much better, and recovered the use of her tongue. This was only two days before the day of the festival, and the first use she made of her recovered speech was, to implore her exhausted husband to go to another room and sleep, so as to recruit his strength for the banquet. He would not leave her, however, but lay down upon a sofa and slept a little. The evening of the 22d she appeared to be so much better that the general consented, after much persuasion, to sleep in the next room, and leave his wife in the care of the doctor and two of his most trusted servants.

At nine o'clock he bade her good-night, went into the next room, and took off his coat, preparatory to lying down. When he had been gone five minutes from her room, Mrs. Jackson, who was sitting up, suddenly gave a long, loud, inarticulate cry, which was immediately followed by the death-rattle in her throat. By the time her husband had reached her side she had breathed her last.

"Bleed her," cried the general.

But no blood flowed from her arm.

"Try the temple, doctor."

A drop or two of blood stained her cap, but no more followed. Still, it was long before he would believe her dead, and when there could no longer be any doubt, and they were preparing a table upon which to lay her out, he cried, with a choking voice :

"Spread four blankets upon it; for if she does come to she will lie so hard upon the table."

All night long he sat in the room, occasionally looking into her face, and feeling if there was any pulsation in her heart. The next morning, when one of his friends arrived just before daylight, he was nearly speechless and utterly inconsolable, looking twenty years older.

There was no banquet that day in Nashville. On the morn

ing of the funeral, the grounds were crowded with people, who saw, with emotion, the poor old general supported to the grave between two of his old friends, scarcely able to stand. The remains were interred in the garden of the Hermitage, in a tomb which the general had recently completed. The tablet which covers her dust contains the following inscription:

"Here lie the remains of Mrs. Rachel Jackson, wife of President Jackson, who died the 22d of December, 1828, aged 61. Her face was fair, her person pleasing, her temper amiable, her heart kind; she delighted in relieving the wants of her fellowcreatures, and cultivated that divine pleasure by the most liberal and unpretending methods; to the poor she was a benefactor; to the rich an example; to the wretched a comforter; to the prosperous an ornament; her piety went hand in hand with her benevolence, and she thanked her Creator for being permitted to do good. A being so gentle and so virtuous, slander might wound but not dishonor. Even death, when he tore her from the arms of her husband, could but transport her to the bosom of her God."

Andrew Jackson was never the same man again. During his presidency, he never used the phrase: "By the Eternal," nor any other language which could be considered profane. He mourned his wife until he himself rejoined her in the tomb he had prepared for them both.

MRS. SIGOURNEY.

"A BEAUTIFUL life I have had. Not one more trial than was for my good. Countless blessings beyond expectation or desert. Behind me stretch the green pastures and still waters by which I have been led all my days. Around is the lingering of hardy flowers and fruits that bide the winter. Before stretches the shining shore."

These are Mrs. Sigourney's words, written near the close of a life of seventy-four years. All who have much observed human life will agree that the rarest achievement of man or woman on this earth is a solid and continuous happiness. There are very few persons past seventy who can calmly look back upon their lives, and sincerely say that they would willingly live their lives over again. Mrs. Sigourney, however, was one of this happy few.

She was born at Norwich, Connecticut, on the first of September, 1791. Her father was Ezekiel Huntley, an exceedingly gentle, affectionate man, of Scotch parentage, who had as little of the Yankee in him as any man in Connecticut. Unlike a Yankee, he never attempted to set up in business for himself, but spent the whole of the active part of his life in the service of the man to whom. he was apprenticed in his youth. His employer was a druggist of great note in his day, who made a large fortune in his business, and built one of the most elegart houses in the State. On his retirement from business, his old clerk continued to reside under his roof, and to assist in the management of his estate; and, even when he died, Mr. Huntley did not change his abode, but remained to conduct the affairs of the widow. In the service of this family he saved a competence for his old age, and he lived to eighty-seven, a

most happy, serene old man, delighting chiefly in his garden and his only child. He survived as late as 1839.

Owing to the peculiar relations sustained by her father to a wealthy family, living, too, in a wing of their stately mansion, and having the free range of its extensive gardens, — Lydia Huntley enjoyed in her youth all the substantial advantages of wealth, without encountering its perils. She was surrounded by objects pleasing or beautiful, but no menial pampered her pride or robbed her of her rightful share of household labor. As soon as she was old enough to toddle about the grounds, her father delighted to have her hold the trees which he was planting, and drop the seed into the little furrow prepared for it, and never was she better pleased than when giving him the aid of her tiny fingers. Her parents never kept a servant, and she was brought up to do her part in the house. Living on plain, substantial fare, inured to labor, and dressed so as to allow free play to every limb and muscle, she laid in a stock of health, strength, and good temper that lasted her down to the last year of her life. She never knew what dyspepsia was. She never possessed a costly toy, nor a doll that was not made at home, but she passed a childhood that was scarcely anything but joy. She was an only child, and she was the pet of two families, yet was not spoiled.

She was one of those children who take naturally to all kinds of culture. Without ever having had a child's book, she sought out, in the old-fashioned library of the house, everything which a child could understand. Chance threw a novel in her way (Mysteries of Udolpho), which she devoured with rapture, and soon after, when she was but eight years of age, she began to write a novel. Poetry, too, she read with singular pleasure, never weary of repeating her favorite pieces. But the passion of her childhood was painting pictures. Almost in her infancy she began to draw with a pin and lilac-leaf, and advanced from that to slate and pencil, and, by and by, to a lead pencil and backs of letters. When she had learned to draw pretty well, paint her pictures, but was long puzzled to Having obtained in some way a cake of gamboge, she begged of a washerwoman a piece of indigo, and

she was on fire to procure the colors.