able grace and spirits—sang and played the spinet and harpsichord [the musical instruments of the Virginia ladies of that day] with uncommon skill. The more solid parts of her education had not been neglected."
She was also well read and intelligent, conversed agreeably, possessed excellent sense and a lively play of fancy, and had a frank, warm-hearted and somewhat impulsive disposition. She was twenty-three years of age at the time of her second marriage, and had been a widow four years. Her only child she lost in infancy.
Tradition, says Randall, has preserved one anecdote of the wooers who sought her hand. It has two renderings, and the reader may choose between them. The first is that two of Mr. Jefferson's rivals happened to meet on Mrs. Skelton's door-stone. They were shown into a room from which they heard her harpsichord and voice, accompanied by Mr. Jefferson's violin and voice, in the passages of a touching song. They listened for a stanza or two. Whether something in the words, or in the tones of the singers appeared suggestive to them, tradition does not say, but it does aver that they took their hats and retired to return no more on the same errand! The other, and, we think, less probable version of the story is, that the three met on the door-stone, and agreed that they would "take turns" and that the interviews should be made decisive; and that by lot or otherwise Mr. Jefferson led off, and that then during his trial they heard the music that they concluded settled the point. After the bridal festivities at
