“The Hermitage of the period now under consideration, Mrs. Polk said, was not the commodious country house so familiar to devout Democrats in pilgrimages of later years. It was a group of log houses in close proximity to each other. The principal one had been built for a block-house in the days of Indian alarms, afterwards used as a store and, about 1804, converted into a dwelling. It, like all block-houses, was two stories high. Near it were three smaller log houses, one story high with low attics. These were used as lodgings for members of the family or guests. The main building—the former block-house—had on the first floor one very large room with a huge fireplace capable of taking in a good-sized load of wood at a time. A lean-to had been built on at the back containing two rooms, one of which was used as the family sleeping quarters, the other as a pantry—or ‘buttery’ as the phrase was then. But the great room, about twenty-four feet by twenty-six, was at once kitchen, dining-room, sitting-room and parlor, and the large table that stood in the middle of it, capable of seating twelve to fourteen people comfortably, was always ‘set.’ “... General Jackson was a wonderful adept in the art of anecdote, and particularly delighted in incidents having a spice of wit or humor. Mrs. Jackson’s observations and experience were, of course, much more limited, but she, too, was a fluent talker and always entertaining.... She was an insatiable reader and was always far better informed upon current topics than the average woman of her time, even those who had been well educated. She was also a prolific writer, keeping up a close correspondence with her numerous relatives and with the General whenever he was absent from home. Her letters were simply her conversation on paper, with no effort at eloquence. As for grammar and orthography, Mrs. Polk said, neither in those days was the exact science it has since become, and she declared that while in the White House she had received notes from ‘leaders in society’ in Washington that would not compare favorably with the most hurried or careless of Mrs. Jackson’s letters.” Mrs. Polk was excellently educated for her time. As a very young girl she was sent to the Moravian Female Academy at Salem, North Carolina, and later she was placed in a girls’ school in Nashville. She came, of course, a generation after Mrs. Jackson and enjoyed privileges which were not known in frontier days. Mrs. Polk’s estimate of the Jacksons is especially important, not only because she knew them intimately from her childhood, but also because by training and long contact with the nation’s leaders and the great from other parts of the world, she had a background which qualified her for unbiased judgment.