HOME LIFE

MRS. INGALLS

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place of "sweet delights" where man renews his strength, conceives his ideals, resolves upon patriotism, gains aggressive vigor for the battles of life. All social and political progress must emanate from the good home. Such can woman (not every woman) create and maintain.

Ingalls assumed the bonds of matrimony with deliberation. He was nearly thirty-two. The effervescent enthusiasm of youth and immature manhood had burned itself away. The day wherein he might have flung himself at the feet of a giggling damsel in imploring posture had happily passed, and his proposal of marriage was by formal, self-respecting, but sincere and candid written instrument. The recipient of this remarkable hymeneal overture was Miss Anna Louisa Chesebrough, like himself, a resident of Atchison, and of New England ancestry. She was immediately descended from a line of New York merchants and importers. The wedding was 27 September, 1865.

II.

To understand the home-life of Ingalls something must be known of the temperamental ten

dencies of himself and wife. She was stirring, aggressive, persistent, ambitious. She was sanguine, mentally strong, slow to abandon a purpose, tactful, diplomatic. He was conscious of his ability, but was the most indolent of men. He was well-nigh devoid of ambition, the little he had aspiring to nothing beyond a sufficient maintenance, the object of all his early political activity in Kansas. He was impractical, but not visionary, and all his early efforts, successful or not, were followed by periods of inactivity, torpor, apathy. While the lessee of a newspaper in Atchison one of his diversions was the study of the specimen-books issued by type-foundries. These he would pore over by the hour, seemingly wholly engrossed with their jingling paragraphs.

It was the ambition of Mrs. Ingalls that her husband should become noted as an orator. To this one purpose she bent every circumstance. By the Republican convention at Lawrence soon after his marriage, Ingalls was offered a nomination for Representative in Congress. He refused the place at the instance of his wife. She did not believe the House held adequate opportunity for the development of his latent powers. When to

others there appeared little possibility that he could ever attain the place in a state having the fierce and warring factions existing in Kansas, Mrs. Ingalls set her heart on the Senatorship for her husband and refused to consider anything else. That he attained that exalted place was due to her judgment and discretion, by which he was ever guided and controlled. He reposed perfect faith in her ability and rarely acted outside of her direction. She did not so much care for the reputation he might make as a statesman, which accounts for the absence of great effort in that direction. Her ideal was that he become the foremost orator of the Nation.

III.

So much has been said in order to show the complete acquiescence of Ingalls to the ascendency voluntarily accorded his wife. For, as his career was political, subserviency there carried to all inferior matters. It had nothing of the nature of the compelling mastery of a superior mind, but was founded in unlimited confidence, complete devotion to his wife. She contributed nothing to his intellect. The funeral of Senator