His wife, the daughter of George W.Dallas, Vice-President of the United States, has ever been my type of gracious womanhood in age--the most beautiful, most charming venerable old lady I ever knew or saw.

Her daughter, Miss Wilkins, with her sister, Mrs.
Saunders, and her children resided in the stately mansion at Homewood, which was to the surrounding district what the baronial hall in Britain is or should be to its district--the center of all that was cultured, refined, and elevating.
To me it was especially pleasing that I seemed to be a welcome guest there.

Musical parties, charades, and theatricals in which Miss Wilkins took the leading parts furnished me with another means of self-improvement.

The Judge himself was the first man of historical note whom I had ever known.

I shall never forget the impression it made upon me when in the course of conversation, wishing to illustrate a remark, he said: "President Jackson once said to me," or, "I told the Duke of Wellington so and so." The Judge in his earlier life (1834) had been Minister to Russia under Jackson, and in the same easy way spoke of his interview with the Czar.