Farther south, at Camden, he laid the corner-stone of a monument to his friend De Kalb; and at Savannah performed the same labor of love for one erected in honor of Nathanael Greene and of Pulaski. At Charleston, also, he met Achille Marat, come from his home in Florida to talk with Lafayette about his father, who met his death at the hands of Charlotte Corday during the French Revolution. There were many meetings in America to remind him of his life abroad. Francis Huger joined him for a large part of his journey; he saw Dubois Martin, now a jaunty old gentleman of eighty-three. It was he who had bought La Victoire for Lafayette's runaway journey. In New Jersey he dined with Joseph Bonaparte, brother of Napoleon, who was living there quietly with his daughter and son-in-law.
Both on the Western frontier and at the nation's capital he met Indian chiefs with garments more brilliant and manners quite as dignified as kings ever possessed. In a time of freshet in the West he became the guest of an Indian named Big Warrior and spent the night in his savage home. On another night he came near accepting unwillingly the hospitality of the Ohio River, for the steamboat upon which he was traveling caught fire, after the manner of river boats of that era, and "burned a hole in the night" and disappeared. He lost many of his belongings in consequence, including his hat, but not his serenity or even a fraction of his health, though the accident occurred in the pouring rain.
Everywhere, particularly in the West, he came to towns and counties bearing his own name. In the East he revisited with his son spots made memorable in the Revolution. On the Hudson he rose early to point out to George the place where André had been taken and the house to which he and Washington had come so soon after Arnold's precipitate flight. At West Point he reviewed the cadets, slim and straight and young, while General Scott and General Brown, both tall, handsome men, looking very smart indeed in their plumes and dress uniforms, stood beside their visitor, who was almost as tall and military in his bearing and quite as noticeable for the neatness and plainness of his civilian dress.
Lafayette was broader of shoulder and distinctly heavier than he had been forty years before. Even in his youth he had not been handsome, though he possessed for Americans the magnetism his son so sadly lacked. His once fair complexion had turned brown and his once reddish hair had turned gray, but that was a secret concealed under a chestnut wig. He carried a cane and walked with a slight limp, which Americans attributed enthusiastically to his wound in their service, but which was really caused by that fall upon the ice in 1803. Despite his checkered fortunes his sixty-eight years had passed lightly over his head. Perhaps he did not altogether relish being addressed as Venerable Sir by mayors and town officials, any more than he liked to have laurel wreaths pulling his wig awry, but he knew that both were meant in exquisite politeness.
And, true Frenchman that he was, he never allowed himself to be outdone in politeness. Everywhere incidents occurred, trivial enough, but very charming in spirit, that have been treasured in memory and handed down to this day. In New London two rival congregations besought him to come to their churches and listen to their pastors. He pleased them both. He led blind old ladies gallantly through the minuet. He held tiny girls in his arms and, kissing them, said they reminded him of his own little Virginia. He chatted delightfully with young men who accompanied him as governors' aides in turn through the different states; and if he extracted local information from these talks to use it again slyly, with telling effect, in reply to the very next address of welcome, that was a joke between themselves which they enjoyed hugely. "He spoke the English language well, but slower than a native American," one of these young aides tells us. He was seldom at a loss for a graceful speech, though this was a gift that came to him late in life. And his memory for faces seldom played him false. When William Magaw, who had been surgeon of the old First Pennsylvania, visited him and challenged him for recognition, Lafayette replied that he did not remember his name, but that he knew very well what he had done for him—he had dressed his wound after the battle of the Brandywine!
The processions and celebrations in Lafayette's honor culminated in the ceremony for which he had crossed the Atlantic, the laying of the corner-stone at Bunker Hill. Pious people had said hopefully that the Lord could not let it rain on such a day; and their faith was justified, for the weather was perfect. We are told that on the 17th of June "everything that had wheels and everything that had legs" moved in the direction of the monument. Accounts tell of endless organizations and of "miles of spectators," until there seemed to be not room for another person to sit or stand. The same chaplain who had lifted up his young voice in prayer in the darkness on Cambridge Common before the men marched off to battle was there in the sunlight to raise his old hands in blessing. Daniel Webster, who had not been born when the battle was fought, was there to make the oration. He could move his hearers as no other American has been able to do, playing upon their emotions as upon an instrument, and never was his skill greater than upon that day. He set the key of feeling in the words, "Venerable men," addressed to the forty survivors of the battle, a gray-haired group, sitting together in the afternoon light. Lafayette had met this little company in a quiet room before the ceremonies began and had greeted each as if he were in truth a personal friend. After his part in the ceremony was over he elected to sit with them instead of in the place prepared for him. "I belong there," he said, and there he sat, his chestnut wig shining in the gray company.
While Webster's eloquence worked its spell, and pride and joy and pain even to the point of tears swept over the thousands of upturned faces as cloud shadows sweep across a meadow, Lafayette must have remembered another scene, a still greater assembly, even more tense with feeling, in which he had been a central figure: that fête of the Federation on the Champs de Mars. Surely no other man in history has been allowed to feel himself so intimately a part of two nations in their moments of patriotic exaltation.