NUMBER ONE.
PERSONAL TRAITS OF PRESIDENT TYLER AND HIS FAMILY.
The interest which is felt in the personal history of a distinguished man is materially increased in the person of Mr. Tyler, for and against whom so much has been said and written. And as I am no politician, but have had the opportunity of seeing a great deal of our Chief Magistrate, personally and in private, I propose to give to the readers of the Knickerbocker a few personal characteristics of the President, drawn from my own knowledge and observation. They are not in themselves of any deep interest, being such as arise in the every-day occurrences of life; but they therefore the better portray the man, and are of much interest on that account.
I remember one evening that a plain countryman from the interior of Pennsylvania called upon the President, and seemed to eye him with keen scrutiny. He was evidently a person well-to-do in the world; who owned the acres that he tilled, and had a good many broad ones; a holder of his own plough, from habits of industry rather than from necessity; and one who, evidently, had always spoken his mind without fear or favor. His plain but clean attire, and his honest, open countenance and proper bearing, struck me very forcibly, and reminded me of a remark which I once heard General Harrison make of Tecumseh, the celebrated Indian warrior, who has been called the 'Napoleon of the West.' General Harrison observed that the Indian was one of the most gentlemanly men he had ever seen. I asked him how that could be?
'Why,' he replied, 'he had self-possession and self-respect.'
This old farmer had these manly qualities. After a long chat with the President, he observed:
'Well, Mr. Tyler, you are a very different man from what I took you to be.'
'How so?' asked the President, laughing.
'Why I thought you were a large, red-faced, haughty man, with your hair combed back and tied in an old-fashioned cue, and that you were as proud as Lucifer. Why, you are as plain as a pikestaff, and as free-spoken as if you had no secrets in the world. I am glad I came to see you, Sir; I have been much deceived.' And so has every man been much deceived who has taken upon hearsay personal prejudices against the President. His personal appearance is very prepossessing. He is above the middle height, and slim, with long arms, and a quick, active gait. His forehead is prominent and very intellectual, with the perceptive faculties, according to phrenology, strongly developed. His hair is light and thin, and mixed with gray. His eye is a light blue, quick and penetrating; at the same time it is frank and open, with a quiet humor lurking in the corner. His nose is remarkably prominent, cheeks thin, and mouth compressed. The whole face is full of character, and the features are remarkably plastic and expressive; changing with every shade of thought that passes through his mind. He is said to bear a strong resemblance to the Duke of Wellington, but his features have none of that rigidity which marks those of the Duke. His conversational talents are of the first order, and he tells a tale with great unction and glee, and with remarkable effect.
I remember the first time I saw the President, I was invited to dine at the White House by his son; and it so happened that after dinner I fell into conversation with the Chief Magistrate upon Mr. Jefferson, of whom he spoke in terms of great enthusiasm. I have since seen a letter from an old friend of the President's, reminding him that he had often expressed the wish before the decease of Mr. Jefferson, an event which, from his advanced age was long expected, that he might deliver his eulogy. It so turned out that the President was appointed; and any one who will read the different eulogies pronounced upon Jefferson, will be struck with the republican appreciation of his character and virtues which Mr. Tyler has set forth with such earnest and vivid eloquence.
I remember well seeing the President the day after the first veto. Great excitement prevailed in all parties throughout the day. The avenue was alive with groups of people in earnest talk, and many visiters, particularly, members of the Democratic party, repaired to the White House at night to tender their thanks to the President for the course he had pursued.
In the dead of the night the inhabitants of the President's square were aroused by the shouts of a drunken mob, who, with discordant fife and old tin-pans for drums, proceeded to the executive mansion and yelled, in consequence of the veto, those insults in the ears of the President and his family, among whom was the wife of the President, then in extremely delicate health. The day after all this, I met Mr. Robert Tyler in the street, as I was proceeding to my dinner, who invited me to dine with him, observing that there was nobody at the house but the family. We entered the White House at the southern front, and found the President seated with his son Tazwell by his side, a lad of fourteen, whom the President was teaching his lesson. It instantly struck me that there was a moral energy in the President of which his enemies little dreamed.
'Peace has her victories,
As well as war;'
says Milton, in his splendid lines to Cromwell, and this is one of them. For months every persuasion to which eloquence could give power, had been exerted on the President, to obtain his veto on the one hand, and his signature on the other. The Whig party, in the plenitude of its power, personified in the person of their bold leader, the 'lord of the lion heart and eagle eye,' and standing on the grave of General Harrison, hallowed by his death, and full of the dictation of success, felt themselves like Olympian Jove with thunderbolt in hand ready to strike down to endless political perdition the 'Acting President' if he dared to veto. The threat was made in tones of thunder, by their great champion. But, lo! the veto came, and calm amidst the breaking of the storm, the President was teaching his little son his lesson. It was a Roman one. In the battle-field a moment often decides the victory. A moment of decisive action which requires no wear and tear of spirit for days, weeks, and months—amidst imprecations and execrations—but an energy which springs to life on the instant, such as Napoleon exerted at Lodi, but which exhibits no greater powers of purpose than President Tyler exhibited—for none but those who witnessed it, can have any idea of the many and the powerful influences which were brought to bear, to obtain the President's signature to the Bank Bill—influences exerted not only by the distinguished and the powerful, face to face with the Chief Magistrate, but through the portentous threatenings of anonymous letters, of the most assassin-like and dastardly character.
We all remember the effigy-burning that succeeded the veto, and which, the President said, 'served but to light him in the path of duty.' A little anecdote which occurred at the dinner-table one day between Mr. John Tyler, Jr. and the President, will show how good-humoredly the President bore a jest upon the subject. There were several young gentlemen present at table, guests of the sons of the President. The Chief Magistrate sat among them, enjoying the talk with apparently as much interest as if the magnates of the nation were around him.
The conversation happened to turn upon the question as to which was the greatest man, Napoleon or Cæsar; and during the conversation, Mr. John Tyler, Jr. chanced to observe, that he had seen it stated, that Pompey's statue, at the base of which Cæsar fell, had been discovered in some excavations made in Rome. 'Ah?' said the President; 'well, John, was there any blood upon it?'
'You don't believe it, I suppose, father?' said the son.
'Why, John, I don't doubt that you have read of the excavation, but I doubt very much if it was truly Pompey's statue; for, after the lapse of so many centuries, the authentication of the statue must be very doubtful.'
'Well, Mr. President,' replied his son, very archly, 'I will tell you of one thing, of which there will be little doubt.'
'What's that?' asked the President.
'Why, some years from this, when some well-digger, or house-builder, or other person, is excavating in the neighborhood of Nashville Tennessee, Louisville Kentucky, or some other place that might be named, he may light upon a stuffed Paddy some six feet high, the earth half burned, with a rope around its neck: 'Ah, what's this?' some one may inquire. 'Why,' replies another, 'it is the effigy of that John Tyler, who vetoed the Bank Bill!'
'Ah,' said the President, laughing heartily, 'you have me there, John.'
I may here remark of Mr. John Tyler, Jr., who is the private secretary of the President, that he is a very handsome man, with courtly manners; that his partialities are to the study of the sciences, rather than to politics; and that he has written a pamphlet upon electricity, which is said to exhibit much knowledge and originality.
Those who have not witnessed the terror which prevails among the clerks, on a change of parties in power at Washington, or even of a change of the head of a department, who, it is rumored, intends to make removals, can have no idea of it. Some poor clerk, who supports a large family upon one thousand or twelve hundred dollars, may have inadvertently let slip an imprudent expression, which some ready spy retails and makes public, with a thousand exaggerations, and, lo! the report takes wind that he is to be removed. Then comes the distress of his agonized wife and children, while the poor woman hurries to the President, or to the head of the department to which her husband belongs, to intercede for him, and save herself and family from ruin.
When General Harrison came into power, multitudes of such fears prevailed, and with fearful truth for their foundation. The good old General himself had no wish to proscribe, but proscription was the word with too many of his friends. I may mention a circumstance which came under my own knowledge.
The head of a certain department, shortly before General Harrison's death, turned out a clerk of his, who was accused of having busied himself in politics—a poor man, who had a wife and six children. She is a beautiful woman, but twenty-six years of age. Her agony was such as to render her almost insane. The removal left her and her children houseless and homeless, with the husband and father in debt. Fiction has wrung many a heart to tears with a fancied picture not to compare in sorrow to the truth of this. Shortly after this removal, General Harrison died, and was laid in state in the hall of the White House, whither flocked multitudes to gaze upon his lifeless remains, and reflect upon the instability of earthly power, and the vanity of all human greatness. I met the lady of the removed official with, another lady, and but one escort, on their way to look their first and last upon the departed President; and I joined her. General Harrison I had known well, and I spoke of his goodness of heart, and manliness of character, as we proceeded, with an earnest truthfulness, which seemed to impress the wife of the official, by whose side I walked.
'I blame —— for my trouble,' she said, naming the head of the department, half to herself; 'I believe the old General was good-hearted.'
We entered the White House. In state, just before the entrance, lay the General. His features were placid, and betrayed little or none of the sufferings of the departed spirit. My companion gazed upon him earnestly and long, and then said, with a hysteric start:
'I would to God it was —— who was lying in that coffin! I'd give a party to-night, poor as I am!'
One may well fancy how deep the agony of heart of a sensitive lady must have been, to wring from her such an expression. In fancy, she heard the voice of her children crying to her for bread; and to her excited mind they appeared before her, dead as the departed President, and of hunger; for so she said, in speaking of her expression afterward.
It was a scene, in those days, to see the department 'let out,' as the boys would say at school. The aspect of those clerks whose political bias was known to be against the party in power, was lugubrious enough. They did not look like gentlemen who, after their official labors were over, were going to their dinners, but as if they were wrapped in sorrow, and wending to a funeral.
One day, shortly after the succession of President Tyler, a certain gentleman turned out fifteen of his officials, in one fell swoop. They got their notices that their services were no more needed by the department, about two o'clock, P. M. The public gardener happened to be in the President's grounds when he heard the news, and seeing the President on the portico, he advanced to him and said:
'Mr. President, only think of it; they're turning all the poor clerks out.'
The President immediately despatched a note for the official, who was soon in the President's presence, and ready to recount the political sins of the expelled.
'Reinstate them,' said the President; 'I cannot bear to have their wives and children coming to me with accounts of their sufferings, when I can prevent it.'
The President never thinks of making a display of mere official dignity. He never thinks of the President, unless he is fulfilling some presidential duty, or unless some one presumes, from his kindness of manner, to encroach upon his dignity; and then the encroacher instantly discovers how much he has erred. This, more than one senator and representative can tell, who has undertaken the task of dictation to the President.
Dickens, who found so much fault with our institutions, and our people generally, justly remarked of our Chief Magistrate, when he called to pay his respects to him: 'The expression of his face was mild and pleasant, and his manners were remarkably unaffected and agreeable. I thought that in his whole carriage and demeanor he became his station singularly well. And yet, as I have before said, he never seems to think of the display of official dignity.'
A distinguished artist who had been employed by the King of France to copy Stuart's full length likeness of Washington which hangs in the White House, was invited by the President to be his guest while copying the picture. The President also employed him to take the likeness of himself, Mrs. Robert Tyler, and his youngest daughter, Alice. The artist's manners were distinguished by the profoundest observance of courtly etiquette; and the Jeffersonian ease of the President's manners served to surprise him. I remember one day while the family circle were all seated round the fire after dinner, the artist rose, and with a profound salaam, said: 'Mr. President, with your permission I will retire to my work.'
'My good fellow, do just what you please,' replied the President, good-humoredly smiling, as the artist bowed himself out of the room.
The President has a peculiar power of inspiring confidence in all who approach him. In the summer-time it is the custom for the National Band of the Marine Barracks to play alternately at the Capitol and in the President's grounds. Crowds of citizens, with senators and representatives accompanying the ladies of their families, walk through the grounds while the band is playing, salute their acquaintances and chat with their friends till the music ceases, when they all, as the sun goes down, loiteringly leave. The President and his family always appear on the portico that fronts on the grounds of the White House, to which steps ascend from both sides, and receive their friends and acquaintances, who call on these occasions to pay their respects to the Chief Magistrate and his household. His manners are so very unpretending that, but for the respect that is paid him, you would not distinguish the Chief Magistrate from the group among which he familiarly mingles, unless you were an observer of character, and then you would know him from the absence of all restraint in his person and conversation, and the freedom and entire frankness of his intercourse with those around him.
On one of these Saturday afternoons, two countrymen, who looked like persons who had come to market, approached the portico, evidently with a desire to see the President. One of them asked a gentleman who was ascending the steps, which was the President. The gentleman pointed out the Chief Magistrate, and asked the countryman if he would like to be introduced to him.
'Why,' replied the countryman, 'I am not of his way of thinking, but they say so much about him and against him, that I should like to have a good look at him, any how.'
'Come up; he 'll be glad to see you. Won't your friend come?'
The friend declined; and the gentleman with his new acquaintance beside him, who gave him his name, ascended the steps. The President instantly noticed the countryman, and observed that the visiter felt some diffidence in approaching him. Mr. Tyler accordingly quit the group by which he was surrounded, and advanced to meet him. On his name being mentioned, the President gave him a hearty shake of the hand, and asked him from what State he came?
The countryman replied, from Virginia.
The President entered into conversation with him, and they stood talking together some ten minutes or more, when with a smiling countenance, and a frank offering of his hand, the visiter withdrew.
'There,' said the President, as the visiter left, 'is a man who, consulting the native manliness of his impulses, has a propriety of deportment that is better than any thing that Chesterfield has taught. He is one of Nature's noblemen.'
After hearing this remark, the introducer was anxious to know what impression the President had made upon a political opponent, who had made such an impression upon the President. He accordingly followed him as he walked away with his friend, who had waited below.
He was persuading his friend to go up and be presented to the President, and his introducer overheard him say:
'I tell you what it is, neighbor, I believe they lie about him faster than Eclipse can run.'
The President is truly a republican. He is often heard to express the loftiest sentiments of patriotism in his family circle, when he can have no purpose of popularity in view, but merely the wish to give utterance to his feelings. A visiter at the White House remembers well on one occasion, being then the only guest, when the Rhode Island difficulties were in their midst, when some one laughingly asked him, 'how he would like to be a King?' The reply was: 'I am afraid, in spite of my democracy, that I should say what the king of Prussia said to Doctor Franklin, that were he in the Doctor's situation he would be a republican too; but being born a king, he was determined to support king-craft.'
The President, who was gazing out of the window, and as it was thought not at all attending to the idle talk, turned quickly round and said with animation:
'I would rather settle the Rhode Island question upon the true principles of the constitution, establish a just treaty with Great Britain, and give my administration an honorable place in the history of the republic, than win and wear the most princely crown in christendom.'
The jokes between Mr. Wise and the President are often very amusing. Mr. Wise is the devoted friend of the President. The representative from Virginia drives a little one-horse carriage, and one day the President observed to him:
'Wise, that carriage of yours looks like a candle-box on wheels; why don't you get a more genteel one?'
'Why, Mr. President, it is a much more genteel one than yours. You keep four horses, which you don't drive more than once a month; and when you do, you hitch them to a second-hand carriage.'
'Why, Wise, how did you find that out?'
'Find it out? Didn't you drive it about for a month, with the coat of arms of Mr. Paulding, late Secretary of the Navy upon it?'
'What of that? Is not Paulding the real Simon Pure of the democracy?'
'Democracy blazoning its coat of arms!' replied Wise. 'I was really glad one day when I stopped at the carriage-maker's to get my truly republican vehicle mended, to see the ex-secretary's carriage there, and a workman employed erasing the coat of arms; making a plain pannel for your excellency.'
'Well,' replied the President, 'I claim to be descended from Wat Tyler, the blacksmith, and I had better have a good stout arm grasping an uplifted hammer, blazoned on my pannel; don't you think so? It would be a real democratic knock-down to Paulding's heraldry.'
Speaking of the President's carriage, reminds me of an anecdote of his coachman, Burrell. Somebody asked Burrell which he liked best, Virginia or Washington?
'Virginia,' replied Burrell. 'I think there are more gentlemen in Virginia, Sir, than there are about Congress. In Virginia, Sir, if a gentleman wanted to abuse the President, he wouldn't come right by his carriage, where I, his coachman, am sitting, to talk it out so as I can hear it. I, Sir, I've waited on him ever since he was first married; I ought to know what kind of a man he is; and the way they lie about him makes me so savage sometimes, that I feel as if I'd like to have some on 'em tied to a tree, and have fair play at 'em with this horse-whip.'
This anecdote is enough to show what kind of a master the President is.
When Pettrick the sculptor was stabbed by some midnight assassin, as soon as the President heard of it he hurried to his studio, where the deed was perpetrated, and not only ordered him to be provided for, but saw him attended to himself.
One Sunday just after dinner, there were several loud ringings of the front door bell, when the President, who had left a gentleman alone in the dining-room, returned and said: 'They have it through the city that I have been shot!'
'With paper bullets of the brain, I suppose they mean, Mr. President,' said the guest.
'No,' replied the President, 'with leaden bullets from a pistol. Come, walk out on the portico, and smoke your cigar.'
The President with his guest walked out on the portico, whither soon came thronging a crowd of the President's friends, who, hearing the report through the city, had hastened to the White House to learn if there was any truth in the story.
There was no truth whatever in it; but every body present was struck with the President's indifference to the report, and the absence of all curiosity on his part as to how it originated. He only remarked: 'If I am shot at, gentlemen, it will be more in malice than in madness;' and apologizing, by saying that daily confinement required that he should take exercise, he rode away in his carriage unattended.
As a husband and a father, President Tyler is a model for any man; and particularly for public men, who too often neglect their families. For a very long time the lady of the President was in feeble health, which terminated in her death last summer. It was a beautiful moral spectacle to see the President, amidst all the cares and perplexities of his exalted station, beset by so many detractors, so devotedly watchful of Mrs. Tyler's declining condition. In the midst of the veto days, when engaged in the most animated political conversation, if Mrs. Tyler chanced to be in the room, the President's eye every minute wandered to her, in affectionate regard; and when she left the room upon the arm of her son or daughter, he would watch her anxiously and in silence till she withdrew, and would often remain in melancholy thoughtfulness for minutes afterward, forgetful of the conversation and those around him.
In bringing up his family, Mr. Tyler has been fortunate. His daughters, except the youngest, Alice, who is at school, are happily married, and his sons who are grown, Mr. Robert and Mr. John Tyler, are gentlemen of honor, manliness, and intellect; and Tazwell, his youngest son, is a lad of promise. Miss Elizabeth Tyler, who is now Mrs. Waller, and living with her husband in Virginia, was much admired in her bellehood when in the White House. Her unpretending and gentle manners inspired with admiration all who approached her.
'Well,' exclaimed a fashionably ambitious young lady one day to a gentleman who was attending her on a visit to Miss Tyler, 'if I were Miss Tyler, I'd blaze my bellehood out as long as my father was President, and make the most devoted lover in christendom bide my beck in the crowd.'
The fair Virginian had no such ambition, and thereby proved herself worthy of the manly heart that has won her.
Mr. Robert Tyler, the eldest son of the President, is a young man of brilliant genius. As a poet, in high-wrought and vivid imagery, he resembles Shelley, whose likeness he personally resembles; and as an orator, there is not a speaker of his years in our country who has made a greater impression than he made in two extemporaneous efforts before the Irish Association. Bold, eloquent, and manly, he dashes into his subject with his whole soul, while comprehensiveness, energy, and point characterize every thing he says.
Certain persons, forgetting the decencies of life, have abused and calumniated Mr. Robert Tyler in the most gross and libellous manner. It is therefore due to him to say, that a kinder son, a more devoted husband and father, or a firmer friend, those who know him have never known. Magnanimous and chivalrous, he throws no veil over either his actions or opinions; and his frank and high bearing wins the regard of all those who come in personal contact with him, however much they may have been before prejudiced against him.
The lady of Mr. Robert Tyler does the honors of the White House. She is the grand-daughter of the late Major Fairlie, of New-York, a soldier of the revolution, and a distinguished citizen, who was well known to many of the oldest inhabitants of that city. Her mother was a celebrated belle, whom our present minister to Spain, Washington Irving, remembers vividly as his friend, and one of the most brilliant women of the day; a fair and witty and most worthy lady, who might well have inspired the author of the 'Sketch Book' with those exalted perceptions of female character which glow so brilliantly in his portraits of the sex.
Mr. Cooper, the celebrated tragedian, married this lady, and Mrs. Tyler is their eldest daughter. Three years since Miss Cooper married Mr. Robert Tyler. Dickens says when he visited the White House, that Mrs. Tyler 'acted as the lady of the mansion, and a very interesting, graceful, and accomplished lady too.'
The just perception of Dickens understood at once the character of Mrs. Tyler. She does the duties of the White House with a graceful naturalness that is remarked by every one, and she combines with a keen perception of character, an acute sense of the ridiculous and a ready wit, the most feminine gentleness of manner and deportment; qualities which are rarely found in combination. Mrs. Tyler is devoted to her children, and she dresses them as plainly as if they were dwellers on a retired estate in Virginia. Her own attire is simple, and she never departs from this simplicity except when state occasions demand some little ornament. The greatest sense of propriety marks her whole deportment in every relation of life.
Mrs. Robert Tyler is now on a visit to a married sister in Alabama; for another beautiful trait of her character is her devotion to her sisters and brother. The only inmates of the White House at present (May first) are the President with his three sons, and Mrs. Jones, his eldest daughter. Mrs. Semple, the President's second daughter, is living in Virginia, and is a lady of great beauty, and in the bloom of health.
The fine features of Mrs. Jones are wan with long illness. She never leaves her room except on some balmy day, to take a short ride. The President always accompanies her, supporting her in his arms to and from her chamber to the carriage, with a tenderness as gentle and as watchful as her own to her babe. The President, unlike some distinguished statesmen of other as well as of our times, is remarkable for his high estimate of female character. He receives the lady visiters of the White House with a deference and respect which has been much noticed, and which is not the manner of a worldling and a courtier, compliment and hollowness, but the impulse of a lofty and holy sentiment. When a lad at school, he prepared as a theme for declamation an essay upon female education, in which the boy expressed those opinions which have ever since been entertained by the man.
The President is a man of the strongest sympathies. There is not a human being about him, from his servants to his children, of whose feelings he is not regardful, and in whose welfare he does not feel a daily and living interest. If the day be cool, he will ask his coachman why he has not his overcoat. If his servant happens not to be cheerful, he will ask him, in the kindest manner, what's the matter with him. And the complaint, if the servant have one, is made without the least hesitation, and with the certainty that he will meet at the President's hands both sympathy and justice. In his intercourse with his servants he is always kind, and frequently jocular, for he is a great lover of a harmless jest.
A few weeks since, the Irishmen of the Capitol waited on the President in a body, and through Mr. Hobson, their orator, expressed their gratitude for the interest he had taken in them, and their profound respect for his character, to which the President made a most eloquent reply.
It was amusing to watch the interest which the President's servants, all of whom belong to him, except Wilkins, the butler of the establishment, and his son, felt in his speech. They modestly took their station by the door, to listen to their master's reply, for they are devotedly attached to him.
'Short,' asked a gentleman, of one of these humble listeners, 'how did you like the President's speech?'
'I always likes the President's speeches, Sir, but I don't think this one of his happiest efforts. I prefers him, Sir, before a jury. He can beat any man in Virginia, before a jury,' was the reply.
The President's love for Virginia is truly worthy of a mother, whose 'jewels are her children.' He delights in telling anecdotes of his early days, in Virginia; and he always has the most cordial greeting for his old Virginia friends, however humble they may be, when they call to see him. How is such and such a one? he will inquire, from the humblest laborer on a farm, up to the highest dignitary of the State.
President Tyler is a man of very unsuspicious nature, and there is no morbidity of feeling in him. He is always cheerful and natural. In the midst of great difficulties of state, when the Cabinet have held protracted meetings, and when, doubtless, there were differences of opinion among them; when the Secretary of State, with his beetling brows and cavernous eyes, passed by alone, absorbed in his own thoughts; when Mr. Spencer's quick step lost some of its elasticity, and the frank and firm Kentuckian, at the head of the Post Office Department, wore an anxious look; and the Attorney-General forgot, for a moment, his courteous salutation to a friendly passer-by; when that true statesman of the old Virginia school, Judge Upshur, seemed involved in what those who have not the mind to comprehend him, call 'abstractions;' and when Mr. Forward looked as if the cares of the Church, as well as those of the Treasury were resting on his shoulders; the President would pass from their midst to his family circle, assembled for dinner, greet most cordially, and apparently without a care, whatever person might chance to be their guest, and mix in the cheerful chat around him, as if he had no thought but the wish to promote it.
The President is a statesman with no secret opinions. He speaks out plainly whatever he thinks; and he listens respectfully, nay, kindly, to the adverse opinions of others, without the least spirit of dictation.
He is not the least of a formalist. If he has a guest, whom he asks to take a glass of wine with him, he will himself search for the keys of the side-board, if the servant happens to be absent, produce the decanters and glasses himself, and tell some pleasant story the while. When he talks of men, he speaks of their worth, and seldom of their wealth. With his purse he is too open, and too often he bestows more than his means warrant, upon some needy applicant, for whom he can find no office, or whom he may think unfitted for one.
For the President his family have the most unbounded love. The only restraint they know, is what they think he would not approve; and their familiar talk among themselves is never checked, in the least, by his entrance; it is, on the contrary, promoted.
These little personal traits of President Tyler and his family, which might be easily extended into a volume, are offered to the readers of the Knickerbocker as being not without interest, since they illustrate the private character of the Chief Magistrate of our great Republic, and with the assurance that they are strictly true.
F.
[A CONTRASTED PICTURE.]
FROM 'PASSION ODE,' AN UNPUBLISHED POEM BY J. RHEYN PIKSOHN