Mrs. Jackson, too, earnestly desired that he should
not again be drawn into the swirl of public life. "I do hope," she
wrote plaintively to a niece soon after her return to the Hermitage,
"they will leave Mr. Jackson alone. He is not a well man and never
will be unless they allow him to rest. He has done his share for the
country. How little time has he had to himself or for his own
interests in the thirty years of our wedded life in all that time he
has not spent one-fourth of his days under his own roof. The rest of
the time away, traveling, holding court, or at the capital of the
country, or in camp, or fighting its battles, or treating with the
Indians; mercy knows what not."

The intent to retire was honest enough but not so easy to carry out.
The conqueror of the Creeks and Seminoles belonged not merely to
Tennessee but to the entire Southwest; the victor of New Orleans
belonged to the Nation. Already there was talk--"talk everlastingly,"
Mrs. Jackson tells us in the letter just quoted--of making the hero
President. Jackson, furthermore, was not the type of man to sit idly
by while great scenes were enacted on the political stage. When he
returned from Florida, he faced the future with the weary vision of a
sick man. Rest and reviving strength, however, put the old vim into
his words and acts. In two years he was a second time taking a seat in
the United States Senate, in three he was contesting for the
presidency, and in seven he was moving into the White House.

The glimpses which one gets of the General's surroundings and habits
during his brief interval of repose create a pleasing impression.
Following the winding turnpike westward from Nashville a distance of
nine or ten miles and rumbling across the old wooden bridge over Stone
River, a visitor would find himself at Hermitage Farm. The estate
contained at that time somewhat more than a thousand acres, of which
four hundred were under cultivation and the remainder luxuriant
forest. Negro cabins stood here and there, and in one corner was a
little brick church which the proprietor had built for the solace of
his wife. In the center of a well-kept lawn, flanked with cedars and
oaks, stood the family mansion, the Hermitage, whose construction had
been begun at the close of the Seminole War in 1819. The building was
of brick, two stories high, with a double wooden piazza in both front
and rear. The rooms were small and simply furnished, the chief
adornment bei