Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/250

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Women from the Time of Mary Washington
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to whose wonderful conversation she invariably listened attentively. But Martha Jefferson loved her country and her father too truly to think of deserting them for the sake of any gallant of King Louis' court. Moreover, she knew that in her own country there was waiting for her some one infinitely superior to anyone she might meet abroad. When, in 1789, she and her father and her sister returned to their beloved Virginia home, Monticello, she met again this second cousin, Thomas Mann Randolph, who had been her childhood sweetheart, and on the 23d of February, 1790, "Miss Patsy," as she was called, and her cousin Tom were married. She was happy in her husband, a man, so Jefferson tells us, "of science, sense, virtue, and competence.' With him she led an ideal family life. Her home, at Edgehill, the Randolph estate, from which, in the winter, when the trees were bare, she could see the glimmer of the white columns of the portico of Monticello, became filled with a host of little people. There were twelve in all, five sons and seven daughters, all equally lovable and interesting in their mother's eyes. But the most enjoyable times of Mrs. Randolph's life were the July vacation months when, with the coming of summer, President Jefferson, tired of Washington and the affairs of state, retired to Virginia and, stopping en route at Edgehill, picked up the whole Randolph family, and carried them off with him to Monticello. When Thomas Jefferson became President, Mrs. Randolph and her sister came from the obscurity of their Virginia homes, and began their reign in the White House. The two sisters took by storm the Capital of the nation. For the first time since their girlhood days in Paris at the court of Louis XVI they became a part of the gay world. During that winter at the President's home Mrs. Randolph was very happy entertaining her father's distinguished guests and taking part in all the gayeties of the Capital. She was everywhere admired. The Marquis de Yrcijo, who was