Mrs. Eaton in her old age sat down and wrote a rambling sort of autobiography, in the course of which she told of this visit to the Hermitage—although nowhere in her reminiscences does she mention the Donelsons, whom she so cordially hated. The dinner at the Hermitage in her honor, she relates, was a splendid occasion, with the General doing the honors with great gusto and making jokes with the guests over the carving of a barbecued pig which was one of the features of the dinner. The General also distinguished himself as a host by passing the bread himself, which was his way of making everybody feel at home. After dinner, however, the master of the Hermitage disappeared; and then it was that Mrs. Eaton, sent by her husband to look for him, found him kneeling by Rachel’s grave in the garden with the tears streaming down his face. Recalling to him his duties as a host she persuaded him to return to the house, where he again donned his mask of gaiety and entered into the hilarity of the guests assembled there. Writing of the Presidential campaign of 1824, Parton says: “The Hermitage was more like a hotel than a home during the summer, so numerous were the guests whom curiosity, friendship or political business brought to it.” And an old lady in Nashville told Parton that she had often been at the Hermitage in those simple old times when there was in each of the four available rooms not merely a guest but a family, while the young men and solitary travelers who chanced to drop in disposed of themselves on the piazza or any other half-shelter about the house. “Never was the Hermitage without a guest,” says Buell in his Jackson biography, “and most of the time it was crowded. Jackson and his wife carried the old-fashioned Southern hospitality to an extreme. They did not wish their guests to be simply visitors, but made them temporary members of the family.” It seems to be the unanimous and unchallenged opinion that a visitor at the Hermitage was always made to feel at home and led to believe that his visit conferred an especial pleasure on his hosts. All comers were welcome. But Andrew Jackson did not wait for guests to come to the Hermitage. Nor were its broad doors open only to the distinguished and prosperous. A characteristic incident is told by one of his early acquaintances relative to the son of the famous Daniel Boone: “The young man had come to Nashville on his father’s business, to be detained some weeks, and had his lodgings at a small tavern towards the lower part of town. General Jackson heard of it; sought him out; found him; took him home to remain as long as his business detained him in the country, saying: ‘Your father’s dog should not stay in a tavern while I have a house.’” The hospitality of the Hermitage not only knew no limitation on the grounds of a visitor’s prosperity or prominence, it was extended alike to friend and foe.