THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
taunt, and especially when a Northern Representative, by some demonstration of uncommon courage, drove his Southern assailant from the field, as my friend Potter had so conspicuously succeeded in doing. That such a state of public sentiment is not healthy will be readily admitted. But we lived then in a feverish atmosphere which dangerously upset the normal standard of human conduct.
On my return trip westward I had to keep a lecturing appointment at Columbus, Ohio. Mr. Salmon P. Chase, who was then Governor of that State, had written me a very kind letter offering me the hospitality of his house, and I had accepted, highly appreciating the honor. I arrived early in the morning, and was, to my great surprise, received at the uncomfortable hour by the Governor himself, and taken to the breakfast room. His daughter Kate, who presided over his household, he said, would be down presently. Soon she came, saluted me very kindly, and then let herself down upon her chair with the graceful lightness of a bird that, folding its wings, perches upon the branch of a tree. She was then about eighteen years old, tall and slender, and exceedingly well formed. Her features were not at all regularly beautiful according to the classic rule. Her little nose, somewhat audaciously tipped up, would perhaps not have passed muster with a severe critic, but it fitted pleasingly into her face with its, large, languid but at the same time vivacious hazel eyes, shaded by long dark lashes, and arched over by proud eyebrows. The fine forehead was framed in waving gold-brown hair. She had something imperial in the pose of the head, and all her movements possessed an exquisite natural charm. No wonder that she came to be admired as a great beauty and broke many hearts. After the usual polite commonplaces, the conversation at the breakfast table, in which Miss Kate took a lively
[ 169 ]
