The proposing of General Jackson as a candidate for the Presidency was received, by most of those who were deemed statesmen, as a burlesque; and many of those most active in his support only desired his election to further their own views, and not for the country's benefit. It was supposed he was so entirely unacquainted with state-craft, that he would be a pliant tool--an automaton, to dance to their wire-pulling. How little they understood him, and how well he understood them! At once he let them know he was President, and was determined to take the responsibility of administering the Government in the true spirit of its institutions. The alarm, which pervaded all political circles so soon as this was understood, is remembered well. It was a bomb exploded under the mess-table, scattering the mess and breaking to fragments all their cunningly devised machinations for rule and preferment--an open declaration of war against all cliques and all dictation. His inaugural was startling, and his first message explicit. His policy was avowed, and though it gathered about him a storm, he nobly breasted it, and rode it out triumphantly. His administration closed in a blaze of glory. He retired the most popular and most powerful man the nation had ever seen. CHAPTER XII. GOSSIP. UNREQUITED LOVE--POPPING THE QUESTION--PRACTICAL JOKING--SATAN LET LOOSE--RHEA, BUT NOT RHEA--TEACHINGS OF NATURE--H.S. SMITH. This must be a gossiping chapter, of many persons and many things, running through many years. I love to dwell upon the years of youth. They are the sweetest in life; and these memories constitute most of the happiness of declining life. Incidents in our pilgrimage awaken the almost forgotten, and then how many, many memories flit through the mind, and what a melancholy pleasure fills the soul! We think, and think on, calling this and that memory up from the grave of forgetfulness, until all the past seems present, and we live over the bliss of boyhood with a mimic ecstasy of young life and its gladdening joys.