younger members of his profession, whom he was always ready to aid and advise. It is remembered that in his professional career he was ever willing, at whatever risk to his fortune or popularity, to shield the poor and obscure from oppression and injustice. It is remembered, too, that he sought in public life no opportunities for personal gain. His integrity was above suspicion. After nine years' service in congress and in the senate of the United States, after a brilliant and successful professional career and four years in the presidency, his estate hardly amounted to $72,000. In his whole political career he always stood for a strict construction of the constitution, for economy and frugality in public affairs, and for a strict accountability of public officials to their constituents. No political or personal influence could induce him to shield those whom he believed to have defrauded the government. Pierce had ambition, but greed for public office was foreign to his nature. Few, if any, instances can be found in our history where a man of thirty-eight, in the full vigor of health, voluntarily gave up a seat in the U. S. senate, which he was apparently sure to retain as long as he wished. His refusal at the age of forty-one to leave his law-practice for the place of attorney-general in Polk's cabinet is almost without a parallel. Franklin Pierce, too, was a true patriot and a sincere lover of his country. The Revolutionary services of a father whom he revered were constantly in his thoughts. Two of his brothers, with that father's consent, took an honorable part in the war of 1812. His only sister was the wife of Gen. John H. McNeil, as gallant an officer as ever fought for his country. To decline a cabinet appointment and enlist as a private soldier in the army of his country were acts which one who knew his early training and his chivalrous character might reasonably expect of him. But for slavery and the questions growing out of it, his administration would have passed into history as one of the most successful in our national life. To judge him justly, his political training and the circumstances that environed him. must be taken into account. Like his honored father, he believed that the statesmen of the Revolution had agreed to maintain the legal rights of the slave-holders, and that without such agreement we should have had no Federal constitution or Union. He believed that good faith required that agreement to be performed. In that belief all or nearly all the leaders of

both the great parties concurred. However divided on other questions, on that the south was a unit. The price of its political support was compliance with its demands, and both the old parties (however reluctantly) paid the price. Political leaders believed that, unless it was paid, civil war and disunion would result, and their patriotism re-enforced their party spirit and personal ambition. Among them all there were probably few whose conduct would have been essentially different from that of Pierce had they been in the same situation. He gave his support to the repeal of the Missouri compromise with great reluctance, and in the belief that the measure would satisfy the south and thus avert from the country the doom of civil war and disunion. See the lives by Nathaniel Hawthorne (Boston, 1852) and David W. Bartlett (Auburn, 1852), and "Review of Pierce's Administration," by Arthur E. Carroll (Boston, 1856). The steel plate is from a portrait by George P. A. Healy. The vignette on page 265 is a view of President Pierce's birthplace, and that on page 272 represents his grave, which is in the Minot cemetery at Concord, N. H.

His wife JANE MEANS APPLETON, born in Hampton, N. H., 12 March, 1806; died in Andover, Mass., 2 Dec., 1863, was a daughter of the Rev. Jesse Appleton, D. D., president of Bowdoin college. She was brought up

in an atmosphere of cultivated and refined Christian influences, was thoroughly educated, and grew to womanhood surrounded by most congenial circumstances. She was married in 1834. Public observation was extremely painful to her, and she always preferred the quiet of her New England home to the glare and glitter of fashionable life in

Washington. A friend said of her: Jane River

"How well she filled her station as wife,

mother, daughter, sister, and friend, those only can tell who knew her in these private relations. In this quiet sphere she found her joy, and here her gentle but powerful influence was deeply and constantly felt, through wise counsels and delicate. suggestions, the purest, finest tastes, and a devoted life." She was the mother of three children, all boys, but none survived

her. Two died in early youth, and the youngest, Benjamin, was killed in an accident on the Boston and Maine railroad while travelling from Andover to Lawrence, Mass., on 6 Jan., 1853, only two months before his father's inauguration as president. Mr. and Mrs. Pierce were with him at the time, and the boy, a bright lad of thirteen years, had been amusing them with his conversation just before the accident. The car was thrown from the track and dashed against the rocks, and the lad met his death instantly. Both parents were long deeply affected by the shock of the accident, and Mrs. Pierce never recovered from it. The sudden bereavement shattered the small remnant of her remaining health, yet she performed her task at the White House nobly, and sustained the dignity of her husband's office. Mrs. Robert E. Lee wrote in a private letter: "I have known many of the ladies of the White House, none more truly excellent than the afflicted wife of President Pierce. Her health was a bar to any great effort on her part to meet the expectations of the public in her high position, but she was a refined, extremely religious, and well-educated lady." She was buried by the side of her three children, in the cemetery at Concord, New Hampshire.