When Men Grew Tall, or The Story of Andrew JacksonLewis, Alfred Henry
History
When Men Grew Tall, or The Story of Andrew Jackson
Lewis, Alfred Henry
Jackson, Andrew, 1767-1845
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....objectionable Mr. Bean with those Galway saw-handles; and that
violent person surrenders unconditionally. In elucidating his sudden
tameness and its causes, Mr. Bean subsequently explains to a disgusted
admirer:
“I looks at the Jedge, an' I sees shoot in his eye; an' thar warn't
shoot in nary 'nother eye in the crowd. So I says to myse'f, says I, 'Old
Hoss, it's about time to sing small!' An' I does.”
Notwithstanding those leaden exchanges with the Governor, and
the conquest of the discreet Mr. Bean, our jurist finds the bench
inexpressibly tedious. At last he resigns from it, as he did from the
Senate, and again retreats to private life.
Here his forethoughtful Scotch blood begins to assert itself, and he
goes seriously to the making of money. With his one hundred and fifty
slaves, he tills his plantation as no plantation on the Cumberland was
ever tilled before; and the cotton crops he “makes” are at once the
local boast and wonder. He starts an inland shipyard, and builds keel
and flat boats for the river commerce with New Orleans. He opens a
store, sells everything from gunpowder to quinine, broadcloth by the
bolt to salt by the barrel, and takes his pay in the heterogeneous
currency of the region, whereof 'coon skins are a smallest subsidiary
coin. Also, it is now that he is made Major General of Militia, an honor
for which he has privily panted, even as the worn hart panteth for the
water brook.
When he is a general, the blooming Rachel cuts and bastes and stitches a
gorgeous uniform for her Bayard, in which labor of love she exhausts the
Nashville supply of gold braid. Once the new General dons that effulgent
uniform, which he does upon the instant it is completed, he offers a
spectacle of such brilliancy that the bedazzled public talks facetiously
of smoked glass. The new General in no wise resents this jest, being
blandly tolerant of a backwoods sense of humor which suggests it.
Besides, while the public has its joke, he has the uniform and his
commission; and these, he opines, give him vastly the better of the
situation.
Many friends, many foes, says the Arab, and now the popular young
General finds his path grown up of enemies. There be reasons for the
sprouting of these malevolent gentry. The General is the idol of the
people. He can call them about him as the huntsman calls his hounds.
At word or sign from him, they follow and pull down whatsoever man or
measure he points to as his quarry of politics. This does not match with
the ambitions of many a pushing gentleman, who is quite as eager for
popular preference, and--he thinks--quite as much entitled to it, as is
the General.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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