A Belle of the Fifties

 The memoirs of “Mrs. Clay, of Alabama,” by which title Mrs. Clement C. Clay, Jr. (now Mrs. Clay-Clopton), was known during the period comprised by 1850–87, begin in the middle of the second decade of the nineteenth century, the scenes being laid among the affluent plantations of North Carolina and Alabama, and, continuing through two brilliant administrations at the national capital, close, as she emerges from the distresses which overtook her and her husband after the never-to-be-forgotten tragedy that plunged a nation into mourning—the death of Mr. Lincoln.