“On Goat Hill, and near where Captain John Carr fell in the well, stood Governor Pickens and the largest crowd I ever saw in Montgomery. Some hundred yards east of the Hill was a sand flat, where General Lafayette and his attendants quit carriages and horses, formed a line and marched to the top of the hill. As we started, the band struck up the old Scottish air, _Hail to the Chief_. As we approached the Governor, Mr. Hill introduced the General to him. The Governor tried to welcome him; but, like the best man the books give account of, when it was announced that he was commander of the whole American forces, he was scarcely able to utter a word. So it was with Governor Pickens. As I have remarked before, Governor Pickens had no superior in the State, but on that occasion he could not even make a speech. But that did not prevent General Lafayette from discovering that he was a great man.... The people of Montgomery did their duty. Col. Arthur Hayne, who was a distinguished officer in the army in the war of 1813, and who was the politest gentleman I ever saw, was the principal manager. If the Earl of Chesterfield had happened there, he would have felt, as I did the first time I saw a carpet on a floor, and was asked to walk in. I declined, saying, ‘I reckon I have got in the wrong place.’” [Illustration: OLD BUILDING IN WHICH LAFAYETTE BALL WAS GIVEN IN 1825.] He was hospitably entertained at Colonel Edmonson’s, on Commerce Street, where he received with kindly grace the crowds that pressed around him. At night a grand ball was given him in the building now standing on the corner of Commerce and Tallapoosa Streets; and in the small hours “a large concourse of citizens escorted him through the darkness down to the landing, and bid him a hearty but mournful adieu amid torrents of tears.”