At last dawns President Van Buren's inauguration morning, and the General stands for the last time before a people whose good and whose honor he has so jealously guarded. Of this farewell appearance, poet Willis writes:
“The air was elastic; the day bright and still. More than twenty thousand people had assembled. The procession, the General and Mr. Van Buren riding uncovered, arrived a little after noon. Their carriage, drawn by four grays, paused. Descending from it at the foot of the steps, a passage was made through the crowd, and the tall white head of the old chieftain went steadily up. The crowd of diplomats and senators to the rear gave way. A murmur of feeling rose up from the moving mass below, as the infirm old General, coming as he had from a sick chamber which his physicians had thought it impossible he should leave, stood bowed before the people.”
In his address the General touches many things. He closes by saying: “My own race is nearly run. Advanced age and failing health warn me that I must soon pass beyond the reach of human events. I thank God my life has been spent in a land of liberty, and that He gave me a heart wherewith to love my country. Filled with gratitude, I bid you farewell.”
CHAPTER XXV—THE GRAVE AT THE GARDEN'S FOOT
THE General wends his slow way homeward, and is two months about the journey. His progress, broken by many stops, is like both a triumph and a funeral; for double ranks of worshipers line the route and sob or cheer as he passes. The harsh horse-face is seamed of care and worn by sickness; but the slim form is still erect and lance-like, and the blue eyes gleam as hawkishly dangerous as when, behind his low mud walls with the faithful Coffee and his hunting-shirt men, he broke down England's pride at New Orleans. Everywhere the people press about him; for republics are not ungrateful, and for once in a way of politics it is the setting, not the rising sun upon which all eyes are centered. In the end he reaches home, and his country of the Cumberland, as on many a former day, opens its arms to receive him.
And now the General, for all his sickness and his well-nigh threescore years and ten, must bend himself to his labors as a planter; for he has come back very poor. He has his acres and his slaves; but debts have piled themselves high, and the tooth of decay can do a devastating deal in eight years.
The General goes to work as though life is just begun. The fences are renewed, the buildings repaired, while the plow breaks fresh furrows in fields that have lain fallow too long. To finance his plans, he borrows ten thousand dollars from Editor Blair. Later, by a huddle of months, Congress repays him that one-thousand-dollar fine, of which a quarter of a century before he was mulcted in New Orleans. This latter, interest swollen, is twenty-seven hundred dollars—a sum not treated lightly in this hour of his narrowed fortunes!
All goes prosperously. The generous soil, as though for welcome to the General, grants such crops of cotton that the wondering Cumberland folk, as once they did aforetime, come miles to view his fields. When not busy with his planting, the General is immersed in politics. Each day he rides down to Wizard Lewis four miles below; or Wizard Lewis rides those four miles up to the Hermitage. Being together, the pair, over pipe and moderate glass, sagely consider the state of the nation.