Colonel William Preston Johnston, The Life of General Albert Sidney Johnston : His Service in the Armies of the United States, the Republic of Texas, and the Confederate States.

[24] Quinan, a scholar versed in the classics and devoted to his occupation. After this, in the hospitable house of her aunt's husband, Colonel Nathaniel Hart, at Spring Hill, in Woodford County, Kentucky, she was well taught by Mr. Ruggles, afterward a United States Senator. As years passed, the kinswomen exchanged the relation of preceptor and pupil for that of dear friends, which was severed only by death.

In the customary interchange of hospitalities, Miss Preston was on a visit to these relations when she met Lieutenant Johnston, and the interest that she at once inspired was reciprocated. This mutual attachment was thorough and unbroken; and Lieutenant Johnston, being sent for a great part of the year 1828 on recruiting service to Louisville, Kentucky, Miss Preston's home, became engaged to her. They were married January 20, 1829. There were many points of resemblance between Albert Sidney Johnston and his wife; and a friend, who knew them both well, has told me that he never knew two people more alike in character. Another, a relation, says they were often mistaken for brother and sister. But this was true rather as to the outcome of character in similar sentiments, and the same philosophy of life, than in their original traits or acquired habits of mind. The affinity was one of sympathy in feelings and aspiration; and the usual law of attraction, based upon contrast of character and community of tastes, was reversed. As they were both persons of most loyal natures, these coincidences increased. Mrs. Johnston was above middle size-five feet six inches in height-and of agreeable person, with a full form, a brilliant color, hazel eyes, dark hair, and somewhat irregular but pleasing features. Her voice had wonderful harmony in its modulations. Her manner was full of dignity and ease, but vivacious and engaging, and her conversation has been variously characterized as piquant, graceful, and eloquent. Mrs. Johnston was a woman of firm yet gentle temper, and, as the eldest daughter of a struggling family, the confidante and counselor of her mother, had been trained to a severe self-discipline. She was eminently benevolent and forbearing. Gifted with a poetic temperament, and very fond of verse, she wrote it with facility and feeling; while her husband, rigorously schooled in a training almost exclusively mathematical, and loving unrefracted truth, jocularly called it good prose spoiled. With these traits, with high literary culture, and with strong religious impulses, she had formed a lofty ideal of the aims and duties of life; and this ideal, she thoroughly believed, was realized by her husband. She was much beloved by her family and friends, and the feeling she awoke in her husband was one of chivalric devotion. He told me that “it was impossible to have felt her influence, and afterward to cherish low views; that to her he owed the wish to be truly great.” This portraiture will show that she was a worthy helpmate for the man of whom I write.