101 Quotes by Nancy Rubin Stuart

In late summer, when sprays of purple loosestrife, goldenrod, and ripening cranberries burst into color along the old road cutting through the Great Marsh of West Barnstable on Cape Cod, the air vibrated with the drumbeat of cicadas, the caws of seagulls and geese.

Slippery as was Knox's land grab of the entire Waldo Patent, nepotism and patronage were common in those days.

Like others who had once enjoyed an elite lifestyle, Lucy craved its return and whenever opportunity arrived, attempted to recreate it...By then no one questioned Lucy's role as the reigning hostess of celebrations, a role she continued to hold in public celebrations during the early Federal period.

Contradictory emotions roiled over her; grief over Arnold's thwarted plans and their mutual hopes for a large reward; relief that her husband was safe, coupled with doubts abut their marriage. Would she ever see Arnold again?

On April 30 Lucy cheerfully reported that, after three days' illness, she was on the mend. Although she had no mirror, she could feel twenty pockmarks on her face. 'I am almost glad you do not see it.," she wrote, "I don't believe I should get one kiss and yet the doctor tells me it is very becoming.

Pegg, cowering in her bedroom, asked her housekeeper to check on the ailing Varick. Then, willing herself in to a frenzy, she tore at her hair and clothes, weeping, her sobs accelerating in volume.

Exhausted by hours of crying and hysterics, Peggy fell into a restless sleep. Her marathon display of insanity, the grandest theatrical performance of her life, had successfully deceived Washington and Hamilton.

Waling the lush grounds overlooking the Potomac, sipping tea, or engaged in needle work in one of Mount Vernon's wainscoted parlors, the two matrons must have made a remarkable contrast; Martha, its soft-spoken mistress, and Lucy, her warm but high-strung 'northern' guest.

Today Lucy would probably be considered a victim of an obsessive-compulsive behavior disorder, a psychological means of reducing anxieties through the numbing repetition of an activity.