Mary Lincoln Extra Credit Questions

[RJNorton]

Kudos, Kathy! You win!

Mary wrote her sister, Emilie, on February 16, 1857:

"Within the last three weeks, there has been a party, almost every night and some two or three grand fetes, are coming off this week -- I may perhaps surprise you, when I mention that I am recovering from the slight fatigue of a very large and I really believe a very handsome and agreeable entertainment, at least our friends flatter us by saying so -- About 500 were invited yet owing to an unlucky rain, 300 only favored us by their presence ...."

In the Turners' book that contains Mary's letters there is a footnote for this. It says, "How Mrs. Lincoln managed to sqeeze three hundred people (much less the expected five hundred) into the downstairs rooms of a modest house in mid-winter, and with women wearing crinolines and hoops, is - to use Lincoln's words on another occasion - 'a matter of profound wonder'."