“A numerous assemblage of elegance and beauty attended,” said the editor of the _Nashville Whig_. “We have never seen more taste and beauty than was displayed in arranging the room, or a more numerous and brilliant assemblage of ladies. The arrangements were largely creditable to the managers. At the head of the room was a large transparency exhibiting an Eagle displayed and encircled in a ray of glory, bearing in his beak a transparent painting of our Chief Magistrate. Fronting at the lower end of the room, was suspended the portrait of Gov. Shelby of Kentucky. On the right side of the hall was a full length portrait of Maj. Gen. Jackson, with a distant view of the British encampment before New Orleans; fronting him were Genls. Coffee and Carroll. These inimitable paintings (with the exception of the transparency) were executed by our artist, Mr. Earl; and are highly honourable to the talents and profession aquirements of that gentleman. Over the paintings and around the room, were rich and beautiful festoons of evergreen and roses....” A ray of glory—how the unknown artist of the transparency depicted it is a matter of conjecture, but the yellowed pages of the _Nashville Whig_ bear testimony to its reality. It takes but small imagination to reconstruct the picture—men in handsome military uniforms, ladies in their gay-colored silks, dancing and conversing in the stately manner of the period, and paying due homage to the President of the United States and the Hero of New Orleans. At the Hermitage they found time, no doubt, to wander about in the moonlit, magnolia-scented grounds and to stroll along the paths of the new garden. Rachel, as she played the rôle of gracious, warm-hearted hostess, could not know that a long, lonely path, illuminated only by the cold rays of fame stretched before her adored husband, and that she, before a decade had passed, would rest under the friendly sod of her garden. Nor could President Monroe foretell the future of the distinguished soldier at his side. A great drama, of which the new Hermitage was to be the chief setting, was beginning. It was not long until General Jackson was appointed governor of the Floridas, and he and Rachel moved their household temporarily to Pensacola. [Illustration: “The Church Where Jackson Worships” A quaint old print of the church which General Jackson had built near the Hermitage in 1823-24 for the convenience of his pious wife and her neighbors.] “Gen. Jackson and family left town Saturday evening last in the Steam Boat Cumberland, on his way to Pensacola,” says the _Nashville Whig_ of April 18, 1821.