BETSY PATTERSON. 511 named Dorcas Spear, and soon became a family man of the old-fashioned type. The Scotch-Irish have the family instinct very strong, and are apt to center all their hopes of happiness in a home. He was a man of quiet and regular habits ; during a long life he scarcely ever left Baltimore, either on business or pleasure. He said once, in speaking of his own history, that ever since he had had a house of his own it had been his invariable rule. to be up last at night, and to see that the fires and lights were in a safe condition before going to bed. Like other rich men, he served as bank director and president, and held other offices of a similar character from time to time. The most fortunate individuals — and few men were more fortunate than this Baltimore merchant — have their share of trouble. Calamity came to him in the bewitching guise of a most beautiful daughter, born in the early years of his wedded life. This was that Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte, whose recent death at the age of ninety-four has called attention anew to the strange romance of her early life. In 1803, at eighteen years of age, she was the pride of her father's home, and the prettiest girl in Baltimore, a place noted then, as now, for the beauty of its women. If the early portraits of her are correct, the word pretty describes her very well. There was a girlish and simple expression in her counte- nance at variance with her character, for, with all her faults, she was a woman of force. In the fall of 1803 this Baltimore beauty attended the races near the city, and there she met her fate. Jerome Bonaparte of the French navy, Napoleon's youngest brother — that brother whom he hoped would accomplish on the ocean what he had done on the land — was at the races that day. Napoleon wanted a great admiral to cope with Nelson and conquer the British navy, and he 31
