Parton says that from this time to the end of his life "General Jackson spent most of his leisure hours in reading the Bible, Biblical commentaries, and the hymn-book, which last he always pronounced in the old-fashioned way, _hime_-book. The work known as 'Scott's Bible' was his chief delight; he read it through twice before he died. Nightly he read prayers in the presence of his family and household servants." Soon after he united with the Church, the congregation wished to choose him to the office of elder. "No," he said, "I am too young in the Church for such an office. My countrymen have given me high honors, but I should esteem the office of ruling elder in the Church of Christ a far higher honor than any I have ever received." For six years he continued to be an unofficial member of the church. Then, on June 8, 1845, he said to those who had gathered about his death-bed: "I am my God's. I belong to Him. I go but a short time before you, and I want to meet you all, white and black, in heaven." Less than two months before his death, when the President and Directors of the National Institute proposed that an imported sarcophagus in their possession be set apart for his last resting-place, he declined, because he wished to lie by the side of his wife, in the garden of The Hermitage. Until 1888 Andrew Jackson, Jr., and after his death, his widow occupied the house, during the last thirty-two years of this period as caretakers for the State, which had bought the property for $48,000. Since 1889 the mansion and twenty-five acres of ground have been cared for by the Ladies' Hermitage Association. [Illustration: ASHLAND, LEXINGTON, KY. _Photo by E. C. Hall_ See page 355] LXXXI ASHLAND, LEXINGTON, KENTUCKY THE HOME OF HENRY CLAY FOR FORTY-SIX YEARS Henry Clay's mother, having married Captain Henry Watkins, moved from Hanover, Virginia, to Woodford County, Kentucky, in 1792. As soon as the future statesman was admitted to practice in the Virginia Court of Appeals, he decided to follow her. Accordingly, in November, 1797, he became a resident of Lexington. Three years later the _Kentucke Gazette_, the first paper published west of the mountains, told of "an eloquent oration" that was "delivered by Henry Clay, Esquire." The year before the young lawyer received this flattering notice he married Lavinia Hart, of Lexington. Seven years were spent in rented quarters, but in 1806 he purchased an estate about a mile and a half from town. Clay took the keenest pleasure in the estate. Once he wrote to a friend: "I am in one respect better off than Moses. He died in sight of and without reaching the Promised Land. I occupy as good a farm as any he would have found had he reached it, and 'Ashland' has been acquired not by hereditary descent but by my own labor."