Page:The Ladies of the White House.djvu/170

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148
MARTHA JEFFERSON RANDOLPH.

waiting for him to pass from one to the other to his dinner, so that they could momentarily stare at him. A female once punched through a window-pane of the house with her parasol to get a better view of him. When sitting in the shade of his porticoes to enjoy the coolness of the approaching evening, parties of men and women would sometimes approach within a dozen yards, and gaze at him point-blank until they had looked their fill, as they would have gazed on a lion in a menagerie."

Mrs. Randolph was "the apple of her father's eye."

All his letters bear witness to his affection, and all his life records this prominent sentiment of his heart. A gentleman writing to him for his views on a proper course of education for woman, he takes the opportunity of complimenting her unconsciously. "A plan of female education," he says, "has never been a subject of systematic contemplation with me. It has occupied my attention so far only as the education of my own daughters occasionally required. Considering that they would be placed in a country situation where little aid could be obtained from abroad, I thought it essential to crive them a solid education, which might enable them—when become mothers—to educate their own daughters, and even to direct the course for sons, should their fathers be lost, or incapable, or inattentive.

"My surviving daughter accordingly, the mother of many daughters as well as sons, has made their education the object of her life, and being a better judge of