Down by the General's gate is a large-stomached mail box. Each morning finds it stuffed to suffocation with sheaves of letters and papers tied in bundles. Also there are shoals and shoals of visitors. For the General's home is a Mecca of politics, to which pilgrims of party turn their steps by ones and twos and tens. Some come to do the stark old General honor; some are one-time comrades, or friends who rose up around him on fields of party war. For the most, however, and because humanity is selfish before it is either just or generous, the visitors are office-seeking folk, who ask the magic of the General's signature to their appeals.
These selfish ones become, in their vermin number and persistency, a very plague. They wring from the suffering General the following:
“The good book, Major,” says he to Wizard Lewis, “tells us that at the beginning there were in Eden a man, a woman, and an office seeker who had been kicked out of heaven for preaching 'Nullification' I To judge of the visiting procession, as it streams in and out of my front gate, I should say that the latter in his descendants has increased and multiplied far beyond the other two.”
The French king forgets and forgives those grievous five millions, and dispatches an artist of celebration to paint the General's portrait. The artist finds the latter of a mind to humor the French king. The portrait is painted—a striking likeness!—and the gratified artist carries it victoriously across seas to his royal master.
The General becomes concerned in keeping England from stealing Oregon, and writes letters to the Government at Washington in protest against it.
“Oregon or war!” is his counsel.
Just as deeply does he involve himself for the admission of Texas into the Union, declaring that of right the nation's boundary should be, and, save for the criminal carelessness of Statesman Adams on the occasion of the last treaty with Spain—made in a Monroe hour—would be, the Rio Grande. Statesman Adams, now in his icy old age, makes a speech in Boston and denies this; whereat the General retorts in an open letter that Statesman Adams is “a monarchist in disguise,” a “traitor,” a “falsifier,” and his “entire address full of statements at war with truth, and sentiments hostile to every dictate of patriotism.”