After he grew too feeble to act as a guide he kept to his cabin, and though the ills of his accumulating years bore heavily on him he always enjoyed chatting with visitors who stopped to talk with him as he sat on his doorstep in the summer or by the blazing logs in his big fireplace in the winter. Although never bedridden, his strength slowly faded away and at last he died quietly on September 4, 1901. Not only was he given the boon of being buried in the garden, near the tomb of his deeply venerated old master, but the added honor was given him of having his funeral held in the hall of the Hermitage, his casket resting on the same spot where he and Gracey had stood to be married more than sixty years before. His funeral was attended by large numbers of his friends, both black and white, and ministers of both races participated in the burial services. Both Alfred and Gracey had originally been members of the little Hermitage church, but after Gracey’s death, Alfred transferred his membership to a near-by church of his own people. In typically weird cadences Uncle Alfred’s black-skinned friends raised their quavering voices to sing his old favorite: On Jordan’s stormy banks I stand and cast a wistful eye; On Canaan’s bright and happy shore where my possessions lie. And so he was borne through the broad front door of the Hermitage and laid to rest in his long home in the garden. “Faithful servant of Andrew Jackson” it says on his modest tombstone; and all those who read the Scripture know of the reward in Heaven promised to the good and faithful servant. VI: THE HERMITAGE HOUSEHOLD The true character of a man in public life is often misjudged by the people when only his public acts are taken into consideration; but the facts about his real disposition and inclinations are invariably revealed clearly and infallibly in his home life. Andrew Jackson stands this test admirably; for visitors to the Hermitage were always impressed with the gentle and considerate conduct of the man at home. A contemporary wrote that the Jackson household “was the abode of native dignity, artless good cheer, instinctive courtesy and a hospitality which no adjective is adequate to describe.” And, making due allowance for the permissible hyperbole of a grateful guest, it is a compliment to any family to receive such a warm tribute. Parton records that Jackson, “so irascible sometimes and sometimes so savage, was never so much as impatient with children, wife or servants. It used to astonish people who came for the first time to the Hermitage to find that its master, of whose fierce ways and words they had heard so much, was indeed the gentlest and tenderest of men.” And then he proceeds to tell of how an unexpected visitor to the Hermitage one evening found the old man seated in his big rocking chair “with a chubby boy wedged in on each side of him and a third, perhaps, in his lap” while he was trying to read his newspaper.