This floor was thrown, it seemed almost miraculously, intact upon the water.  There were some six or eight ladies on board, who were saved on this floor.  When the smoke had lifted sufficiently to permit a night view—­for it was night—­Governor White and Judge Boyce were seen swimming near this floor of the wreck.  White was burned terribly in the face and on the hands, and was blinded by this burning.  The ladies were in their night-clothes; but what will not woman do to aid the distressed, especially in the hour of peril?  One of the most accomplished ladies of the State snatched from her person her robe de chambre, and, throwing one end to the struggling Governor, called to him to reach for it, and with it pulled him to the wreck, and kindly, with the aid of others, lifted him on.  The same kind office was performed for Boyce, and they were saved.  Though a stranger to the Governor, this great-hearted woman tore into strips her gown, and kindly did the work of the Good Samaritan, in binding up the wounds of one she did not know, had never before seen, and to whose rank and character she was equally a stranger; and when she was floating upon a few planks, at the mercy of the waters, and surrounded by interminable forests covering the low and mucky shores of Red River for many miles, where human foot had rarely trod, and human habitation may never rest—­one garment her only covering, and all she could hope for, until some passing steamer should chance to rescue them, or until she should float to the river’s mouth, and find a human habitation.  She, too, is in the grave, but the memory of this act embalms her in the hearts of all who knew her.  Blessed one!—­for surely she who blessed all who came within her sphere, and only lived to do good, must in eternity and for eternity be blest, like thousands of others who have ministered in kindness for a day, and then went to the grave—­in thy youth and loveliness thou wert exhaled from earth:  like a storm-stricken flower in the morning of its bloom, wilted and dead, the fragrance of thy virtues is the incense of thy memory!

It was long before Governor White was fully restored to sight.  No public man, and especially one so long in public life, ever enjoyed more fully the confidence of his constituents than Edward Douglass White.  His private character was never impeached, even in the midst of the most excited political contests, nor did the breath of slander ever breathe upon his fair fame, from his childhood to the grave.

I am incompetent to write of Alexander Barrow as his merits deserve.  In him all that was noble and all that was respectable was most happily combined.  A noble and commanding person, a manly and intellectual face, an eye that bespoke his heart, a soul that soared in every relation of life above everything that was little or selfish, a ripe and accurate judgment, a purpose always honorable and always open, without concealment or deceit, and an integrity pure and unsullied