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: