“On returning to the house, some friends of General Jackson who probably had not seen him for some time, begged him to show them the arms presented to him in honor of his achievements during the last war; he acceded to their request with great politeness and placed on a table a sword, a saber and a pair of pistols. The sword was presented to him by Congress; the saber, I believe, by the army which fought under his command at New Orleans. These two weapons, of American manufacture, were remarkable for their finish and still more so for the honorable inscriptions with which they were covered. But it was to the pistols that General Jackson wished more particularly to call our attention. He handed them to General Lafayette and asked him if he recognized them. The latter, after examining them attentively for a few minutes, replied that he fully recollected them to be a pair he had presented in 1778 to his paternal friend, Washington, and that he experienced a real satisfaction in finding them in the hands of one so worthy of possessing them. At these words the face of ‘Old Hickory’ was covered with a modest blush, and his eye sparkled as in a day of victory. ‘Yes, I believe myself worthy of them,’ exclaimed he, in pressing the pistols on Lafayette’s hands to his breast, ‘if not from what I have done, at least for what I wished to do for my country.’ All of the bystanders applauded this noble confidence of the patriot hero, and were convinced that the weapons of Washington could not be in better hands than those of Jackson.” (These pistols, it should be here interpolated, were presented to General Jackson by General George Washington’s nephew, Bushrod Washington; and were a part of the valued collection of trophies in the Hermitage until they were lost in the fire in 1834.) [Illustration: The front parlor, with original furniture, carpet and damask silk hangings.] [Illustration: Front of upstairs hall, showing the linen closets flanking the wide doorway leading onto the upper front gallery.] Lafayette’s stay at the Hermitage was short. In the late afternoon his steamboat returned to Nashville where a grand banquet was given in his honor that evening, with General Jackson presiding. The Marquis left the next morning by steamboat for Louisville, and had a narrow escape from death when the boat struck a snag in the Ohio and sank within a few minutes. Fortunately, however, he escaped without injury.