A lank, fiery, swearing, drinking frontier lawyer, and general of coon-skin militia, sharp and sallow of face, blue of eye, peaked of head, his hair grizzled and tied with eel-skin, anointed with bear’s oil. Fighting chickens or duels, running horse races or hounds, buying land and negroes, standing stallions and for every office worth while, from Major General to Supreme Judge, and in all of it and every thing, getting there. “Getting there” more nearly fitted him in every thing he ever attempted than any man of his day and generation. No American save Grant, Forrest, Stonewall Jackson and Roosevelt has ever come anywhere near his record of accomplishing things, and the latter has never yet had half a chance for showing what he might do in a pinch. “Jim,” said one of Old Hickory’s negroes to another, the day after the old warrior died, “does yo’ think ole Marster has gone to heab’n?” “Nigger,” said the other one, with becoming scorn, “does you think ole Marster has gone to de other place?” “No, no! I don’t think dat—in course ole Marster couldn’t go to hell—he wus too good an’ kind a man fur dat, an’ too nice a gemman; but I jes’ can’t xackly see how he cu’d go to heab’n. De good Book say you mustn’t kill an’ you mustn’t cuss, an’ you know ole Marster wus right peart at both.” “Nigger,” said the other, with emphasis, “if ole Marster tuk a noshun to go into heab’n jes’ tell me who gwine ter keep him out—jes tell me!” Great men are teeth in the cog-wheels of things, and sooner or later the grooves they were made to fit will come to them. The opportunity that knocked at Jackson’s door came from the arm of as gallant an Indian as ever made his word his bond—William Weatherford, the Red Eagle, war chief of the fighting Creeks.