One distinguished visitor of this period was G. P. A. Healy, the celebrated artist commissioned by Louis Phillipe to paint a portrait of Jackson to hang beside that of Washington in the king’s gallery at Paris. The story of Healy’s arrival at the Hermitage is a dramatic one. Arriving unannounced at the house, he found no one there but the desperately ill old man and the servants. Ushered into Jackson’s room, where he was sitting propped up in his big chair by the window, Healy, impressed by the fame of the distinguished citizen in whose presence he stood, fell on his knee before him and exclaimed: “I have come to paint your picture.” This obsequiousness did not suit the old democrat, and he sternly bade him to rise, saying: “Kneel to no one but your Maker!” Healy apparently did not succeed in making himself clear as to his purpose, and so he returned to Nashville where he found Andrew, junior, and his wife, explained his intentions to them and returned to the Hermitage with them. Then General Jackson would not consent to sit for his picture unless young Mrs. Jackson would pose also. She consented, and so Healy fell to work. He succeeded in his race with Death, completing the portrait just ten days before the old man gave up the ghost; and the portrait made under these trying circumstances (of which a duplicate made by Healy now hangs in the Hermitage) is considered a good likeness and an excellent piece of work. The Healy portrait, however, good as it is, can hardly be considered a better likeness than one other picture made during these last days of the General’s life—a daguerreotype made by a Nashville man, Dan Adams, who had lately become a practitioner of the newly discovered art. To gratify the ambition of Mr. Adams to hand down to posterity an actual likeness of General Jackson, the sick old man was carried in his chair out onto the back porch and there the exposure was made. It is a tradition in the family that the General was displeased with the likeness when it was shown to him, expressing his disapproval of it in characteristic language; but it is entirely likely that this is, in fact, the most faithful image of Andrew Jackson that now exists, even though the pain-wracked old man growled when they showed it to him: “Humph! Looks like a monkey!” Not only was the master of the Hermitage persecuted by visitors during his last eight years, but during this time he was also bombarded with correspondence pouring in on him from friends and strangers, persons seeking political favors, inviting him to celebrations and barbecues, asking for autographs or locks of his hair, or merely expressing their admiration. A recent article in a New York paper reproduced a letter from one of the impressionable young ladies of 1842 who wanted a lock of the old hero’s hair, and this letter is fairly typical of those that poured in on him. After a florid and flattering introductory paragraph the young lady says: