“_Jackson ought to be admonished to be passive; for the moment he is announced as a candidate, he will be assailed by the Virginia junta with menaces, and those failing, with insidious promises of boons and favors._” On the back of this anti-caucus, pro-convention letter-writing, that his candidate Jackson may have a proper début, Aaron pulls a Swartwout string, pushes a Van Ness button. At once the obedient Bucktails proffer a dinner in Jackson’s honor. The hero accepts, and comes to town. The town is rent with joy; Bucktail enthusiasm, even in the cider days and nights of Martling, never mounted more wildly high. Aaron, from his back parlor in the old Jay house, directs the excitement. It is there Jackson finds him. “I shall not be at the dinner, general,” says Aaron; “but with Van Buren and Davis and Van Ness and Ogden and Rutgers and Swart-wout and the rest, you will find friends and good company about you.” “But you?” “There will be less said by the Clintons and the Livingstons of traitors and murderers if I remain away. I owe it to my past to subdue lies and slanders to a smallest limit. No; I must work my works behind bars and bolts, and in darkened rooms. It is as well--better! After a man sees sixty, the fewer dinners he eats, the better for him. I intend to live to see you President; not on your account, but mine, and for the grief it will bring my enemies. And yet it may take years. Wherefore, I must save myself from wine and late hours--I must keep myself with care.” Aaron and the general talk for an hour. “And if I should become President some day,” says Jackson, as they separate, “you may see that Southwestern enterprise of ours revived.” “It will be too late for me,” responds Aaron. “I am old, and shall be older. All my hopes, and the reasons of them are dead--are in the grave. Still”--and here the black eyes sparkle in the old way--“I shall be glad to have younger men take up the work. It should serve somewhat to wipe ‘treason’ from my fame.” “Treason!” snorts the fiery Jackson. “Sir, no one, not fool or liar, ever spoke of treason and Colonel Burr in one breath!” There is a mighty dinner outpouring of Buck-tails, and Jackson--the “hero,” the “conqueror,” the “nation’s hope and pride,” according to orators then and there present and eloquent--is toasted to the skies. At the close of the festival a Clintonite, one Colden, thinks to test the Jackson feeling for Aaron. He will offer the name of Aaron’s arch enemy. The wily Colden gets upon his feet. Lifting high his glass he loudly gives: “De Witt Clinton!”