Chapter III

Wilson turned, and with a frown went moodily back to his desk and sat down on the high stool gloomily eyeing the page in a ledger which he had just consulted.

“By George, that woman’s a corker,” said the drummer, sociably, as he came back and stood near the long wood-stove. “Of course, I don’t know what it’s all about, but she’s her own boss, I’ll stake good money on that.”

“She’s about the sharpest and in many ways the strongest woman in the state,” said the storekeeper, with a sigh. “Good Lord, Masters, she’s been my main-stay ever since I opened this shack, and now to think because that loud-mouthed Bazemore, who expects me to pay a good part of his salary, takes a notion to rip her up the back in meeting, why--”

“Oh, I see!” cried the drummer--“I understand it now. I heard about that at Darley. So _she’s_ the woman! Well, I’m glad I got a good look at her. I see a lot of queer things in going about over the country, but I don’t think I ever ran across just her sort.”

“She’s had a devil of a life, Masters, from the time she was a blooming, pretty young girl till now that she is at war with everybody within miles of her. She’s always been a study to me. She’s treated me more like a son than anything else--doing everything in her power to help me along, buying, by George, things sometimes that I knew she didn’t need because it would help me out, and now, because I didn’t get up in meeting last Sunday and call that man down she holds me accountable. I don’t know but what she’s right. Why should I take her hard-earned money and sit still and allow her to be abused? She’s simply got pride, and, lots of it, and it’s bad hurt.”

“But what was it all about?” the drummer inquired.

“The start of it was away back when she was a girl, as I said,” began the storekeeper. “You’ve heard of Colonel Preston Chester, our biggest planter, who lives a mile from here--old-time chap, fighter of duels, officer in the army, and all that?”

“Oh yes, I’ve seen him; in fact, I was at college at the State University with his son Langdon. He was a terrible fellow--very wild and reckless, full half the time, and playing poker every night. He was never known to pay a debt, even to his best friends.”

“Langdon is a chip off of the old block,” said Wilson. “His father was just like him when he was a young man. Between you and me, the Colonel never had a conscience; old as he now is, he will sit and laugh about his pranks right in the presence of his son. It’s no wonder the boy turned out like he did. Well, away back when this Mrs. Boyd was a young and pretty girl, the daughter of honest, hard-working people, who owned a little farm back of his place, he took an idle fancy to her. I’m telling you now what has gradually leaked out in one way and another since. He evidently won her entire confidence, made her believe he was going to marry her, and, as he was a dashing young fellow, she must have fallen in love with him. Nobody knows how that was, but one thing is sure, and that is that he was seen about with her almost constantly for a whole year, and then he stopped off suddenly. The report went out that he’d made up his mind to get married to a young woman in Alabama who had a lot of money, and he did go off and bring home the present Mrs. Chester, Langdon’s mother. Well, old-timers say young Ann Boyd took it hard, stayed close in at home and wasn’t seen out for a couple of years. Then she came out again, and they say she was better-looking than ever and a great deal more serious and sensible. Joe Boyd was a young farmer those days, and a sort of dandy, and he fell in love with her and hung about her day and night, never seeming willing to let her out of his sight. Several other fellows, they say, was after her, but she seemed to like Joe the best, but nothing he’d do or say would make her accept him. I can see through it now, looking back on what has since leaked out, but nobody understood it then, for she had evidently got over her attachment for Colonel Chester, and Joe was a promising fellow, strong, good-looking, and a great beau and flirt among women, half a dozen being in love with him, but Ann simply wouldn’t take him, and it was the talk of the whole county. He was simply desperate, folks say, going about boring everybody he met with his love affair. Finally her mother and father and all her friends got after her to marry Joe, and she gave in. And then folks wondered more than ever why she’d delayed for she was more in love with her husband than anybody had any reason to expect. They were happy, too. A child was born, a little girl, and that seemed to make them happier. Then Mrs. Boyd’s mother and father died, and she came into the farm, and the Boyds were comfortable in every way. Then what do you think happened?”

“I’ve been wondering all along,” the drummer laughed. “I can see you’re holding something up your sleeve.”

“Well, this happened. Colonel Chester’s wife was, even then, a homely woman, about as old as he was, and not at all attractive aside from her money, and marrying hadn’t made him any the less devilish. They say he saw Mrs. Boyd at meeting one day and hardly took his eyes off of her during preaching. She had developed into about the most stunning-looking woman anywhere about, and knew how to dress, which was something Mrs. Chester, with all her chances, had never seemed to get onto. Well, that was the start of it, and from that day on Chester seemed to have nothing on his mind but the good looks of his old sweetheart. Folks saw him on his horse riding about where he could get to meet her, and then it got reported that he was actually forcing himself on her to such an extent that Joe Boyd was worked up over it, aided by the eternal gab of all the women in the section.”

“Did Colonel Chester’s wife get onto it?” the drummer wanted to know.

“It don’t seem like she did,” answered Wilson. “She was away visiting her folks in the South most of the time, with Langdon, who was a baby then, and it may be that she didn’t care. Some folks thought she was weak-minded; she never seemed to have any will of her own, but left the Colonel to manage her affairs without a word.”

“Well, go on with your story,” urged the drummer.

“There isn’t much more to tell about the poor woman,” continued Wilson. “As I said, Chester got to forcing himself on her, and I reckon she didn’t want to tell her husband what she was trying to forget for fear of a shooting scrape, in which Joe would get the worst of it; but this happened: Joe was off at court in Darley and sent word home to his wife that he was to be held all night on a jury. The man that took the message rode home alongside of Chester and told him about it. Well, I reckon, all hell broke out in Chester that night. He was a drinking man, and he tanked up, and, as his wife was away, he had plenty of liberty. Well, he simply went over to Joe Boyd’s house and went in. It was about ten o’clock. My honest conviction is, no matter what others think, that she tried her level best to make him leave without rousing the neighborhood, but he wouldn’t go, but sat there in the dark with his coat off, telling her he loved her more than her husband did, and that he never had loved his wife and that he was crazy for her, and the like. How long this went on with her imploring and praying to him to go, I don’t know; but, at any rate, they both heard the gate-latch click and Joe Boyd come right up the gravel-walk. I reckon the poor woman was scared clean out of her senses, for she made no outcry, and Chester went to a window, his coat on his arm, and was climbing out when Joe, who couldn’t get in at the front door was making for the one in the rear, met him face to face.”

“Great goodness!” ejaculated the commercial traveller.

“Well, you bet, the devil was to pay,” went on the storekeeper grimly. “Chester was mad and reckless, and, being hot with liquor, and regarding Boyd as far beneath him socially, instead of making satisfactory explanations, they say he simply swore at Boyd and stalked away. Dumfounded, Boyd went inside to his miserable wife and demanded an explanation. She has since learned how to use her wits with the best in the land, but she was young then, and so, by her silence, she made matters worse for herself. He forced her to explain, and, seeing no other way out of the affair, she decided to throw herself on his mercy and make a clean breast of things she and her family had kept back all the time. Well, sir, she confessed to what had happened away back before Chester had deserted her, no doubt telling a straight story of her absolute purity and faithfulness to Boyd after marriage. Poor old Joe! He wasn’t a fighting man, and, instead of following Chester and demanding satisfaction, he stayed at home that night, no doubt suffering the agony of the damned and trying to make up his mind to believe in his wife and to stand by her. As it looks now, he evidently decided to make the best of it, and might have succeeded, but somehow it got out about Chester being caught there, and that started gossip so hot that her life and his became almost unbearable. It might have died a natural death in time, but Mrs. Boyd had an enemy, Mrs. Jane Hemingway, who had been one of the girls who was in love with Joe Boyd. It seems that she had never got over Joe’s marrying another woman, and when she heard this scandal she nagged and teased Joe about his babyishness in being willing to believe his wife, and told him so many lies that Boyd finally quit staying at home, sulking about in the mountains, and making trips away till he finally applied for a divorce. Ignorant and inexperienced as she was, and proud, Mrs. Boyd made no defence, and the whole thing went his way with very little publicity. But the hardest part for her to bear was when, having the court’s decree to take charge of his child, Boyd came and took it away.”

“Good gracious! that was tough, wasn’t it?” exclaimed the drummer.

“That’s what it was, and they say it fairly upset her mind. They expected her to fight like a tiger for her young, but at the time they came for it she only seemed stupefied. The little girl was only three years old, but they say Ann came in the room and said she was going to ask the child if it was willing to leave her, and they say she calmly put the question, and the baby, not knowing what she meant, said, ‘Yes.’ Then they say Ann talked to it as if it were a grown person, and told her to go, that she’d never give her a thought in the future, and never wanted to lay eyes on her again.”

“That was pitiful, wasn’t it?” said Masters. “By George, we don’t dream of what is going on in the hearts of men and women we meet face to face every day. And that’s what started her in the life she’s since led.”

“Yes, she lived in her house like a hermit, never going out unless she absolutely had to. She had an old-fashioned loom in a shed-room adjoining her house, and night and day people passing along the road could hear her thumping away on it. She kept a lot of fine sheep, feeding and shearing them herself, and out of the wool she wove a certain kind of jean cloth which she sold at a fancy figure. I’ve seen wagon loads of it pass along the road billed to a big house in Atlanta. This went on for several years, and then it was noticed that she was accumulating money. She was buying all the land she could around her house, as if to force folks as far from her as possible, and she turned the soil to good purpose, for she knew how to work it. She hired negroes for cash, when others were paying in old clothes and scraps, and, as she went to the field with them and worked in the sun and rain like a man, she got more out of her planting than the average farmer.”

“So she’s really well off?” said the drummer.

“Got more than almost anybody else in the county,” said Wilson. “She’s got stocks in all sorts of things, and owns houses on the main street in Darley, which she keeps well rented. It seems like, not having anything else to amuse her, she turned her big brain to economy and money-making, and I’ve always thought she did it to hit back at the community. You see, the more she makes, the more her less fortunate neighbors dislike her, and she loves to get even as far as possible.”

“And has she had no associates at all?” Masters wanted to know.

“Well, yes, there is one woman, a Mrs. Waycroft, who has always been intimate with her. She is the only--I started to say she was the only one, but there was a poor mountain fellow, Luke King, a barefoot boy who had a fine character, a big brain on him, and no education. His parents were poor, and did little for him. They say Mrs. Boyd sort of took pity on him and used to buy books and papers for him, and that she really taught him to read and write. She sent him off to school, and got him on his feet till he was able to find work in a newspaper office over at Canton, where he became a boss typesetter. I’ve always thought that her misfortune had never quite killed her natural impulses, for she certainly got fond of that fellow. I had an exhibition of both his regard and hers right here at the store. He’d come in to buy something or other, and was waiting about the stove one cold winter day, when a big mountain chap made a light remark about Mrs. Boyd. He was a head taller than Luke King was, but the boy sprang at him like a panther and knocked the fellow down. They had the bloodiest fight I ever saw, and it was several minutes before they could be separated. Luke had damaged the chap pretty badly, but he was able to stand, while the boy keeled over in a dead faint on the floor, bruised inside some way. The big fellow, fearing arrest, mounted his horse and went away, and several of us were doing what we could with cold water and whiskey to bring the boy around when who should come in but Ann herself. She was passing the store, and some one told her about it. People who think she has no heart and is as cold as stone ought to have seen her that day. In all my life I never saw such a terrible face on a human being. I was actually afraid of her. She was all fury and all tenderness combined. She looked down at him in all his blood and bruises and white face, and got down on her knees by him. I saw a great big sob rise up in her, although her back was to me, and shake her from head to foot, and then she was still, simply stroking back his damp, tangled hair. ‘My poor boy,’ I heard her say, ‘you can’t fight my battles. God Himself has failed to do that, but I won’t forget this--never--never!’”

“Lord, that was strong!” said Masters. “She must be wonderful!”

“She is more wonderful than her narrow-minded enemies dream of,” returned the storekeeper. “You see, its her pride that keeps her from showing her fine feelings, and it’s her secluded life that makes them misunderstand her. Well, she brought her wagon and took the boy away. That was another queer thing,” Wilson added. “She evidently had started to take him to her house, for she drove as far as the gate and then stopped there to study a moment, and finally turned round and drove him to the poor cabin his folks lived in. You see, she was afraid that even that would cause talk, and it would. Old Jane Hemingway would have fed on that morsel for months, as unreasonable as it would have been. Ann sent a doctor, though, and every delicacy the market afforded, and the boy was soon out. It wasn’t long afterward that Luke King went to college at Knoxville, and now he’s away in the West somewhere. His mother, after his father’s death, married a trifling fellow, Mark Bruce, and that brought on some dispute between her and her son, who had tried to keep her from marrying such a man. They say Luke told her if she did marry Bruce he’d go away and never even write home, and so far, they say, he has kept his word. Nobody knows where he is or what he’s doing unless it is Mrs. Boyd, and she never talks. I can’t keep from thinking he’s done well, though, for he had a big head on him and a lot of determination.”

“And this Mrs. Hemingway, her enemy,” said the drummer tentatively, “you say she was evidently the woman’s rival at one time. But it seems she married some one else.”

“Oh yes, she suddenly accepted Tom Hemingway, an old bachelor, who had been trying to marry her for a long time. Most people thought she did it to hide her feelings when Joe Boyd got married. She treated Tom like a dog, making him do everything she wanted, and he was daft about her till he died, just a couple of weeks after his child was born, who, by-the-way, has grown up to be the prettiest girl in all the country, and that’s another feature in the story,” the storekeeper smiled. “You see, Mrs. Boyd looks upon old Jane as the prime cause of her losing her _own_ child, and I understand she hates the girl as much as she does her mother.”

A man had come into the store and stood leaning against a show-case on the side devoted to groceries.

“There’s a customer,” said the drummer; “don’t let me keep you, old man; you know you’ve got to look at my samples some time to-day.”

“Well, I’ll go see what he wants,” said Wilson, “and then I’ll look through your line, though I don’t feel a bit like it, after losing the best regular customer I have.”

The drummer had opened his sample-case on the desk when Wilson came back.

“You say the woman’s husband took the child away,” remarked the drummer; “did he go far?”

“They first settled away out in Texas,” replied Wilson, “but Joe Boyd, not having his wife’s wonderful head to guide him, failed at farming there, and only about three years ago he came back to this country and bought a little piece of land over in Gilmer--the county that joins this one.”

“Oh, so near as that! Then perhaps she has seen her daughter and--”

“Oh no, they’ve never met,” said Wilson, as he took a sample pair of men’s suspenders from the case and tested the elastic by stretching it between his hands. “I know that for certain. She was in here one morning waiting for one of her teams to pass to take her to Darley, when a peddler opened his pack of tin-ware and tried to sell her some pieces I was out of. He heard me call her by name, and, to be agreeable, he asked her if she was any kin to Joe Boyd and his daughter, over in Gilmer. I could have choked the fool for his stupidity. I tried to catch his eye to warn him, but he was intent on selling her a bill, and took no notice of anything else. I saw her stare at him steady for a second or two, then she seemed to swallow something, and said, ‘No, they are no kin of mine.’ And then what did the skunk do but try to make capital out of that. ‘Well, you may be glad,’ he said, ‘that they are no kin, for they are as near the ragged edge as any folks I ever ran across.’ He went on to say he stayed overnight at Boyd’s cabin and that they had hardly anything but streak-o’-lean-streak-o’-fat meat and corn-bread to offer him, and that the girl had the worst temper he’d ever seen. Mrs. Boyd, I reckon to hide her face, was looking at some of the fellow’s pans, and he seemed to think he was on the right line, and so he kept talking. Old Joe, he said, had struck him as a good-natured, lazy sort of come-easy-go-easy mountaineer, but the girl looked stuck up, like she thought she was some better than appearances would indicate. He said she was a tall, gawky sort of girl, with no good looks to brag of, and he couldn’t for the life of him see what she had to make her so proud.

“I wondered what Mrs. Boyd was going to do, but she was equal to that emergency, as she always has been in everything. She held one of his pans up in the light and tilted her bonnet back on her head, I thought, to let me see she wasn’t hiding anything, and said, as unconcerned as if he’d never mentioned a delicate subject. ‘Look here,’ she said, thumping the bottom of the pan with her finger, ‘if you expect to do any business with _me_, you’ll have to bring copper-bottom ware to me. I don’t buy shoddy stuff from any one. These pans will rust through in two months. I’ll take half a dozen, but I’m only doing it to pay you for the time spent on me. It is a bad investment for any one to buy cheap, stamped ware.’”

(To be Continued.)

_From Painting by Jan Steen._]

Twelfth Night.

BY CHARLES J. BAYNE.

Last of the wassail nights,
Wholesomely merry,
Still on the mistletoe
Clings the white berry;
Still are the apples red,
Brown is the ale;
Feast of our Saxon sires,
Hail and all hail!

Bring forth the boar’s head,
Bring forth the Rhenish;
Tankards that melt away
Haste to replenish;
Lift on the stoutest log;
Loud be the laughter,
Until the sound of mirth
Shake wall and rafter.

Call back the sturdy days
When hearts of oak
Beat to the lilting strains
We now invoke;
Call back the hearty days
When squire and yeoman
Feasted the home-returned
Pikeman and bowman.

Masques in the Temple hall,
Staged for the benchers,
Wait while the turning-spit
Heaps up the trenchers--
Wait while the venison,
Basted with spices,
Smokes as the richest
Of Yule’s sacrifices.

Now Merry Andrew comes,
Fresh from the morris;
Now rustic Corydon
Trips it with Chloris;
Let the soft virginals
Answer the tabor;
After this wassail night
Come days of labor.

Such were the old delights
Rounding the Yule;
Where sleeps His Majesty,
Lord of Misrule?
Still are the apples red,
Brown is the ale;
Feast of our Saxon sires,
Hail and all hail!

Life and Times of Andrew Jackson.

BY THOS. E WATSON.

Andrew Jackson was born on March 15, 1767.

There has been a hot dispute over the place of his birth, but the weight of the legal evidence favors South Carolina.

His parents were immigrants from the northern part of Ireland, where the people are mainly Presbyterians in religion, and where there is an inter-mixture of Scotch blood; but there seems to be no positive proof that the Jacksons belonged to the over-worked family of Scotch-Irish.

They were poor people, living at Carrickfergus, linen weavers by trade, and, if any one of them had ever been prominent in any way, the story is lost. The most painstaking researches made by enthusiastic hero-worshipers have failed to trace the Jackson lineage to a single cattle-lifting lord, or to any other member of that upper world into which the biographical snob is so eager to cast his anchor.

The Jacksons were plain, common, industrious, honest folks, who held a respectable, independent place in their own community, but who were not so prosperous as to resist the temptation to try their fortunes in the New World.

Hugh Jackson, brother to Andrew’s father, had been a soldier in a British regiment, and had served in America. He was present at Braddock’s defeat, and may have known Fausett, the Virginia scout, who is said to have given the rash British general the wound of which he died. (_See note._)

_Note_:

“The Virginia provincials, under Washington, by their knowledge of
border warfare, and cool courage, alone saved the day.

“Braddock was himself mortally wounded by a provincial named Fausett.
A brother of the latter had disobeyed the silly orders of the General,
that the troops should not take position behind the trees, when
Braddock rode up and struck him down. Fausett who saw the whole
transaction, immediately drew up his rifle and shot him through the
lungs.”

_“The Great West,” Howe._

Apparently, Hugh Jackson became interested in the efforts of the Catawba Land Company to colonize its holdings in the Carolinas, for upon his return to Ireland he began to get together a band of kinspeople, neighbors and friends, for the purpose of emigrating to America.

Among those whom Hugh Jackson persuaded was his brother, Andrew. But, before everything could be got ready for the voyage, Hugh Jackson fell in love with the daughter of well-to-do parents, and married her; and the wife of Hugh was so satisfactory in herself and her surroundings that the happy husband decided to remain in the old country--his wife having vetoed his emigration scheme.

His brother Andrew, however, had probably already made his arrangements to go to America, and, having got unsettled, found it not so easy to sink back into his former life; therefore, after some hesitation, he and the three Crawfords, one of whom was the husband of his wife’s sister, took ship for Charleston.

Upon his coming to North Carolina, it seems that Andrew Jackson was too poor to buy land. Instead, therefore, of locating in the Waxhaws Settlement, where most of the immigrants from Carrickfergus had bought homes, he went to Twelve-mile Creek, a branch of the Catawba.

Here he was seven miles distant from the Waxhaws Settlement, and was face to face with the gigantic task of carving out a farm from the wilderness.

The historian, the orator, the painter, have been eager in the duty of blazoning the deeds of our pioneer missionaries, law-makers and soldiers. The names of these heroes live, and deserve to live, in letters of light upon the records of our country. But, to our pioneer farmers, justice has never been done. Theirs was a combat calling for every soldierly trait of John Smith and Miles Standish. The patient courage which swung the axe, in the depths of primeval woods, was no less heroic than the bravery which made the musket conquer. The toil of the warrior’s march was slight by comparison with the homely, but exhausting, work of preparing the soil for the sowing of seed. The arrows of the red men were not more deadly to the soldier than were the fevers which rose from the swamps and pulled down the settler as he struggled to open out his farm.

In the South, in the East, in the West, the story of the pioneer plowman of America is one of dauntless courage, of quiet heroism. He found the New World a wilderness and he has well-nigh made it a garden. His axe, his spade, his hoe, his plow, his muscle, his brain, his very heart and soul have all been enlisted in the work; and never once have his lips uttered the craven’s plea for “Protection.” Never once has he gone to the doors of legislation begging special favors. Never once has he lied to government and people for the purpose of securing a selfish advantage at the expense of his fellowman.

No. He has not only not demanded of the government either Protection or Privilege, but he has submitted--yes, for one hundred years he has submitted!--to be robbed of a portion of his annual produce in order that our Infant Industry Capitalists should be able to build up the corporate power which now, in the form of Trusts, dominates the Republic and secures the lion’s share of all the wealth created in every field of industry.

Like many another pioneer of the American wilderness, Andrew Jackson found the task too hard. He died under the strain. The impression which his famous son had as to the immediate cause of his death was that he ruptured a blood vessel in the handling of a heavy log.

The body of the hero who had fallen in the fight for his wife and little ones--the fight to make a home for them in the wilderness--was buried in the graveyard of the Waxhaw Settlement church. In after years, when efforts were made to identify the spot it could not be done.

* * * * *

According to local tradition, there was held at the cabin-home of the dead man the grewsome “wake” which was customary among the Irish in the Old Country. Relatives from the Waxhaw settlement came out to Jackson’s “clearing,” when they learned that he was no more; and, after preparing the body for burial, their grief gradually wore itself out, and the whiskey-jug became the ruling factor of the occasion. As lamentation gave place to revelry, it is said that “the corpse came in for his share of the refreshments.” What this may mean, each reader shall judge for himself.

The same tradition claims that the body was hauled from the cabin to the graveyard upon a rough wooden frame or sled, and that such was the disorder of the journey that the corpse was jolted off the sled and “tumbled on its face in a little bottom,” on the banks of Waxhaw Creek, near the crossing.

The man who was riding the horse, which was hitched to the sled, had not known that he had lost his load until one of the funeral party in advance, happening to look back, saw “the sled bouncing up and down, in a very light way.”

They had to go back miles before they came to the spot where the body had rolled off the sled.

The numerous biographers of Andrew Jackson have shunned this local tradition as something entirely too horrible to put in print; yet books are only valuable to the extent that they tell the truth. The story is useful as an illustration of the extreme roughness of frontier conditions at that time; the poverty of the Jacksons, and the rude simplicity of border funerals.

The immigrant had gone into the unbroken wilderness to build his log cabin; and apparently there was no wagon road from his “clearing” to the Waxhaw Settlement.

The use of the wooden frame or sled to carry the body on, would indicate more strongly the lack of a road than the lack of a wagon, for, even though the Jacksons had no such vehicle, the Waxhaw relatives would have brought one if there had been a passable road. The corpse, tumbling off the sled and being left behind on its face in the little bottom, is uncanny, but to the dead the uncanny is not the uncommon.

The brilliant soldier--son of the Emperor Charles V--Don John of Austria, who broke the sea-power of the Turks in the battle of Lepanto, died dismally in the Netherlands; and his body was carried on horse-back to Spain, in two sacks--half of the body in one sack and half in the other.

When Abraham Lincoln died, his face discolored so rapidly that those in charge, to save the feelings of the people who would want to gaze upon the revered features, painted out the shocking discoloration; and, thus artificially masked, the martyred President was borne to his tomb.

* * * * *

The widow Jackson and her two little boys did not go back to the distant, lonely cabin on Twelve Mile Creek. From the church-ground where the husband and father had been buried, they went to the home of George McCamie, who had married Mrs. Jackson’s sister. Here, within a fortnight of the funeral, a son was born to the widow; and this son she named Andrew, after his father.

As soon as she was able to travel, the widow Jackson left the McCamie home and went to live with James Crawford, her brother-in-law.

Mrs. Crawford was an invalid, and Mrs. Jackson took charge of the Crawford housekeeping. Thus she and two of her boys lived for several years, the oldest son, Hugh, remaining with George McCamie.

The family name of Andrew Jackson’s mother was Hutchinson. She had, at least, a primary English education, for it was she who taught Andrew to read. That she was a woman of strong, lovable traits, is proven by the sound advice she impressed upon the mind of her great son, and by the passionate attachment to her which he carried throughout his life.

After the battle of New Orleans, when the victor had been crowned with laurel in the Cathedral and acclaimed like a demi-god through the streets, it was of his mother that he spoke to the officers whom he was about to disband--their glorious work being done.

“_Gentlemen, if only_ SHE _could have lived to see this day!_”

As you follow the narrative of Andrew Jackson’s career, you will hear him say many things that you will not approve, will see him do many things which you cannot applaud, but when you recall that at the very top-notch of his success and his pride, his heart stayed in the right place, and was sore because his mother could not be there to gladden her old eyes with the glory of her son--you will forgive him much in his life that was harsh and cruel and utterly wrong.

During each Winter, for two or three years, after he had reached the age of seven, Andrew Jackson was sent to the old-field school of a Mr. Branch. After this, he attended the select school which a Presbyterian preacher, Dr. David Humphreys, taught in the Waxhaw settlement. He appears to have been going to this higher school in the spring of 1780, when the inroad of Tarleton created a panic in that portion of the Carolinas. At some later period of his youth, he is said to have attended the old Queen College or Seminary at Charlotte a couple of terms, but the time is not definitely known.

As to education, therefore, it may be safely stated that Andrew Jackson enjoyed much more than the ordinary advantage of a back-woods boy of his time. At the age of ten, he had become so good a reader that he was often chosen to read the newspaper to the assembled neighbors; and he remembered with pride, in after years, that he had thus had the honor of “reading out loud” the Declaration of Independence upon its arrival in the Waxhaws. For a lad of ten this was, indeed, something to remember with honest pride.

He also learned to write “a good hand,” which can be easily read even to this day: he was well up in arithmetic, and was fond of geography: grammar he detested, as most of us did. While yet a school-boy he wrote a composition which was in the nature of a patriotic proclamation, reminding his countrymen that they must expect occasional defeats and that they could hope to win only by steady effort and resolute courage.

From the advent of Tarleton, in 1780, and the Buford Massacre, until the surrender of Cornwallis, the widow Jackson and her boys were tossed hither and thither in the whirlwind of the Revolutionary War. The people of the Carolinas were divided, as they were in other states, some being Tories and in favor of remaining as subjects of Great Britain, while the majority were Whigs, and in favor of Independence.

The feud between the two local factions waxed bitter, splitting into savage groups almost every neighborhood, and often setting in hostile array, the one against the other, members of the same family.

The troops sent over to this country by King George committed many atrocities, some of which historians have shrunk from recording, but it is also true that many a nameless horror was perpetrated by our own people upon each other. In the later stages of the conflict, almost no mercy was shown by Tory to Whig, or by Whig to Tory.

After Gates’ disastrous defeat at Camden, Andrew Jackson made his home for a while at the house of Mrs. Wilson, a distant connection of Mrs. Jackson. This lady lived a few miles from Charlotte. During his stay with her, Andrew made himself useful pulling fodder, going to mill, driving the cows to pasture, gathering vegetables for the table, carrying in the wood, and taking farm tools to the blacksmith shop to be mended.

Mrs. Wilson had a son who became Andrew Jackson’s playmate and friend; and this son, who was afterward a prominent minister of the Gospel, used to relate that whenever young Jackson went to the blacksmith shop he would bring back with him some new weapon, spear, club, tomahawk, or grass blade with which to kill the British.

Dr. Wilson remembered having told his mother one day, when speaking of Jackson, “Mother, Andy will fight his way in the world.”

A girl of the neighborhood, who became in due time Mrs. Smart, happened to see Andrew Jackson as he passed along the road, on his way to the home of Mrs. Wilson.

She described the lad as being almost a scarecrow. He was riding a little grass-fed pony or colt, which was so small that the long thin legs of “the gangling fellow,” Jackson, could almost meet under the horse’s belly. The rider wore a wide-brimmed hat which flapped down over his face, which was yellow and worn. His figure was covered with dust, and as this Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance galloped along the road, he and his shabby little horse presented the forlornest spectacle that had ever greeted the laughing eyes of the girl who was to become known in Jacksonian annals as Mrs. Susan Smart.

Hugh Jackson, the oldest of the three boys, joined the band of patriots which was raised and equipped, at his own expense, by that noble leader, Colonel William R. Davie, of South Carolina. Only sixteen years of age, Hugh Jackson left the field hospital, where he had been suffering from fever, and joined in the assault upon Stono Ferry. The excitement, the exertion, the heat of the day (June 20, 1779), brought on a relapse, and the gallant youth died.

As to Andrew Jackson, he himself said,

“Take it altogether, I saw and heard a good deal of war in those days, but did nothing toward it myself worth mention.”

However, he further stated that he acted for Colonel Davie as mounted orderly, or messenger, “being a good rider and familiar with all the roads in those regions.”

He witnessed the battles of Hanging Rock and Hobkirk’s Mill, and took part in a skirmish with the Tories at the house of Captain Sands.

Andrew and Robert Jackson were taken prisoners, and it was while so held that the boys were ordered, Robert first and then Andrew, to clean the boots of one of Tarleton’s lieutenants. Both refused, and to each was dealt a savage sabre-cut which had much to do with Robert’s death soon afterward, and which gave to Andrew a scar and a hatred which he bore to his grave.

To the rescue of her boys, came Mother Jackson, she who was “as gentle as a dove and as brave as a lioness.”

The lads were so young, and were in such a desperate plight with smallpox, that the British officers were perhaps glad to get rid of such an encumbrance; at any rate they were released or exchanged, and the forlorn group, the mother and her sick boys, journeyed back to their home.

But Robert was already so far gone that he died; and when the smallpox left Andrew he was a mere skeleton. “It took me all the rest of the year (1781) to recover my strength and get flesh enough to hide my bones.”

To the sacred cause of liberty, Elizabeth Jackson had already given two of her sons. The third had barely escaped a like fate. But the golden-hearted woman was not to be cast down, or taught cowardly prudence. No sooner was Andrew out of danger, than she sent him to the home of Joseph White, another brother-in-law, and set out, herself, to carry food and medicine to the sick and wounded patriots who were confined in the British hulks in Charleston Harbor.

Braver, it may be, than the soldier himself is the battlefield nurse who brings water to his parched lips, bandages to his bleeding wound, tender ministrations to his dying hours.

May it yet come to pass that some time, SOME TIME, in the unfolding of higher and better things, these angels of Mercy, the Good Women of the Christian Nations, may be able to rush in between the lines, as _once_ happened in the days of old, and stay the hands lifted to shed human blood!

Elizabeth Jackson, in the spirit of consecration, went to what seemed to her the post of duty, thinking nothing of the cost to herself.

They were in prison--her neighbors, friends, compatriots--and she did visit them. She brought to the suffering prisoners words of comfort; messages from home; the motherly sympathy which heals like a balsam; the kind word which is sweeter than myrrh.

Then the ministering angel, the best of all created things, a good woman, passed out of the ship, carrying with her the deadly fever which knew no difference betwixt the good and the bad. After a brief illness she died, and she was buried near Charleston; but, like her husband, her dust lies in a grave that cannot be found.

After the loss of his mother (in the fall of 1781), Andrew Jackson remained with Joseph White, a saddler by trade, helping him in his shop, in the making and mending of saddles and harness. At the same time, he read everything he could lay his hands on--books, pamphlets and newspapers. His uncle’s father was a local magistrate, possessed of a book of law forms and rules of common practice. Most young men would lay such a book underneath a volume of Sermons, and then spread a layer of dust over both; but Andrew Jackson afterward said that he read and re-read the law book until he knew it by heart.

But at this period in his growth an unfortunate thing happened. The death of his father and his brothers had left Andrew Jackson the heir-at-law to a considerable part of the estate of Hugh Jackson, of Carrickfergus, his grandfather.

The amount, some fifteen hundred or two thousand dollars, was just about enough to unsettle the average young man, jostling him out of the routine of dull, monotonous industry--saddle-mending, for example.

The legal representative of the Hugh Jackson estate, in America, was the William Barton, of Charleston, at whose house Elizabeth Jackson had died. Why it was that he turned over the money to the young man before he became of age is not explained. Perhaps Andrew wanted the money, and had made up his mind to get it. If so, the conduct of Barton is comprehensible. Whenever Andrew Jackson wanted a thing and made up his mind to get it, he could become a most troublesome customer. At all events, Mr. Barton paid over the money to the boy, and the boy sowed wild oats with it.

He bought a fine horse, and fine equipments for the horse; he bought fine raiment for his own person, including a gold watch; he bought a fine pair of pistols, so that he would be ready in case it became desirable to shoot somebody. In short, he went to going all the gaits of a fast young man, until his money was gone.

At the last, he made a bet which would have swept away even his horse, had he lost; but luck favored him; he won; and it is a convincing proof of his inborn good sense that he immediately paid up his debts, and rode his fine horse away from Charleston and its allurements.