ll ill of the ship fever and
died. Hugh and Robert both died in the service.

Andrew was thus left an orphan, weakened in body by the smallpox, which
he took while he was in prison. Moreover, he bore on his head the mark
of a blow from the sword of a British officer whose boots he had refused
to polish. No man ever lived who had a simpler human way of loving those
who befriended him and of hating those who hurt him than Andrew Jackson;
and surely few men ever had better excuse than he for hating the British
uniform. His feeling against the British was one of the things that
colored his opinions on public questions; the supreme hour of his life
was the hour when, at New Orleans, he had his revenge--full measure,
heaped up, and running over--for all that he had suffered in the
Waxhaws. Scholarly historians, passing rapidly over the events of his
childhood, give many pages of learned criticism to the course he took on
great public questions in later years, and gravely deplore the terrible
passions that swayed him when, no doubt, he should have been as
deliberate and calm as they are while they review his stormy life. But
for those who would rather understand than judge him it surely cannot
seem a small thing that he started out in life with such a heritage of
bitter memories, such a schooling in hatred, as few children were ever
cursed with. Passion and revenge are wrong, of course, but the
sandy-haired, pockmarked lad of the Waxhaws had better excuse than most
boys for failing to learn that lesson. It is doubtful, indeed, if any
one ever took the trouble to teach it him. One little thing that stuck
in his mind probably hurt worse than the sabre cut on his head. He did
not even know where his mother's grave was.

It does not appear that during the next seven years, while he was
growing to manhood, he gave himself with much industry either to study
or to work. For six months he was employed in the shop of a saddler, but
he seems to have learned more about filling saddles than about making
them, for he became somewhat famous as a horseman even in a country
where the love of horseflesh was universal. He got acquainted with some
wealthy people from Charleston who were exiled until the British
evacuated their city, and lived with them a sporting life which was
beyond his means. After the peace he made a visit to Charleston, got
into debt, got out of it by winning a wager, and grew somewhat graver in
consequence of his experien