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By Root 1389 0

to dose the entire cavalry platoon that had escorted him from Little Rock and was waiting to escort her to Little Rock, and while she was at it she might as well dose their horses too, and then maybe the sight of all those horses with the trots and canters and gallops would convince her that she was the First Lady of Arkansas, but that would delay the trip to Little Rock. It was the longest speech he had ever made in his life, and it exhausted him, but it convinced his mother, whose first response, however, was, “But I don’t have a blessit thing to wear.” Isaac, who was wearing the new suit his father had had tailored for him, indicated it, and told her that his father would most likely “fix her up” too when she got there. So she put on her best black dress, and dressed the girls Rachel and Lucinda in the only dresses they had, and told Lum to put on his best britches and wash good behind the ears, but Lum wasn’t going, he declared. He said he didn’t care if his father was elected king of England, he didn’t want nothing to do with no cities. Isaac told him that his father had given Isaac the house and eighty acres, and Lum could stay and keep the farm while Isaac rejoined his Federal infantry in pursuit of Cecil’s Rebels. Sarah stuffed a few belongings into a gunnysack and she and her daughters waved goodbye to Isaac and Lum, and rode off with the cavalry platoon to Little Rock.

Sarah’s dream, which she had dreamt years earlier on the occasion of their first night in the dogtrot, came exactly true. The dream had been about the perhaps excessively highfalutin reception that Jacob now hosted in her honor, after he had taken her and their daughters out to the town’s best dressmaker and had them fitted out with hoops. Most of the younger girls of that day did not wear hoops, but Jacob was determined to have all three of his “gals,” including Sarah, in hoops. Rachel was almost twenty, and looked quite ladylike in hers, but Lucinda was only fifteen, and looked uncomfortable, and felt uncomfortable, and was not able to move about in her hoops, nor sit, so during the reception she remained parked inside her hoops in one corner, where no one spoke to her, although I doubt that this experience was sufficiently traumatic to account for the fact that many years later she went insane.

The part of the reception that Sarah did not like at all was when the other ladies tried to talk to her and she couldn’t understand them, couldn’t tell whether they were asking questions or just making statements. “It is so festive?” a woman would say to her, and she didn’t know if this was a question or not. “The price of crinoline is outrageous?” another woman would say. “I am Senator Fishback’s wife?” another would say. “The militia makes one feel more secure?” “The price of coffee is ridiculous?” “The band will be playing soon?” “Your daughters are exquisite?” Some of these words, like “exquisite,” Sarah did not even understand, and to the lady who asked this particular question, if it was a question, she mumbled in reply, “Not as fur as I know, yet.”

She was very glad when Jacob came and took her hand and led her away from the ladies and out onto the balcony to watch the band playing, and to see the crowd waving and cheering, and to hear the cannon firing their salutes. The Arkansas Gazette’s society editor commented the following day: “For a woman so little familiarized with the amenities of the drawing room, the governor’s lady acquitted herself handily.” Jacob read this item to her, but was required to explain, as best he could, “amenities,” “drawing room,” and “acquitted.” Still Sarah wondered if they weren’t poking fun at her, and her next words to Jacob were: “Jake, how long do you have to be governor?” When he told her four years, she sighed.

She was to do a lot of sighing during those four years. She would sigh when the Gazette wrote, in reference to a habit of Jacob’s: “For a man who prefers to receive visiting dignitaries with his coonskin cap atop his head, the governor acquitted himself handily.” When the Little Rock National Democrat,