The most amusing and least accurate of all the available pictures of the early Hermitage is to be found in _The Jackson Wreath, or National Souvenir_, a laudatory book about Jackson, the President elect, published in Philadelphia in January, 1829. In this book is an attractive engraving of a suspiciously conventional house which bears the descriptive entitlement: “The Hermitage;” but faith in the accuracy of the picture is shaken by a naive footnote (in microscopic type) which says with engaging candor: “On the commencement of this work, proper steps were taken to procure a drawing of the Hermitage from the spot, by addressing a prominent establishment at Nashville; whether the several requests were ever received by them is not known, but the drawing never came to hand here. A gentleman at Washington, intimate with the grounds, politely furnished a description from which a drawing was made. Anyone who is acquainted with the difficulty of producing a correct drawing from description will overlook any difference that may appear in the likeness to the place it is intended to represent.” This imaginative engraving shows a square house, with the gable end in front, and with two single chimneys—one at the left and one in the rear. There is also a neat little portico at the front door, and an out-house close by the left-hand side of the house. Despite its confessed inaccuracy it was obviously the source of at least two other popular engravings of that day which reproduced with fidelity its improperly placed gable and chimneys; and even as late as 1855 as reliable a monthly magazine as Harper’s illustrated an article about Jackson with an alleged picture of the Hermitage which was plainly but a copy of the engraving in the “Jackson Wreath” with merely a few slight changes in the arrangement of the conventionalized trees and horses in the foreground. Fortunately there is preserved a contemporaneous picture, reproduced in this book, which is generally accepted as a fairly accurate representation of the house as it appeared after the wings were added and before the fire. After the fire the front portico was rebuilt two stories high all the way across; and the six large columns as now seen replaced the smaller posts formerly used. This picture, judging from the location of the tomb so close to the house, is not free from the imaginative latitude the artists sometimes allow themselves; but it is said to give a good idea of the way the house looked before the fire. In October, 1834, occurred the burning of the Hermitage, an event that attracted widespread attention. Jackson was at that time at the White House in Washington, but his adopted son and his wife were occupying the Hermitage.