restored the ball to its rightful owner or his representative, nor whether Colonel Benton was able to look the President comfortably in the face that evening.

On the 16th of July, at six o'clock in the morning, Congress adjourned. The opposition members went home to join their allies of the press in the attempt to convince the people of the United States that the veto was ruining the country, and would completely ruin it, unless they elected Messrs. Clay and Sergeant to the first offices of the government in the following November.

The opposition press told the people that the veto had caused the stock of the great bank to decline four per cent.; that bricks had fallen from five dollars per thousand to three; that wild consternation pervaded the great cities; that real estate had lost a fourth of its value; that western men were contracting to deliver pork, next season, at two dollars and a half if Clay was elected, and at one dollar and a half if Jackson was elected; that mechanics were thrown out of employment by thousands, and were going supperless to bed; that no more steamboats were to be built on the western rivers until there was a change of rulers; that the old friends of General Jackson were falling away from him in every direction; that mass-meetings were held in every State denouncing the veto; that the Irish voters were seceding from General Jackson, thousands of them at one meeting; and that the defeat of the tyrant was as certain to occur as the sun was certain to rise on the morning of election day.

CHAPTER XXX I.

RE-ELECTION OF GENERAL JACKSON.

A STRANGE, sad, exciting, eventful summer was that of 1832.

It opened gayly enough. The country had never been under such headway before. In looking over the newspapers for May of that year, the eye is arrested by the incident of Washington Irving's triumphal return home after an absence from his native land of seventeen years. He had gone away an unknown youth, or little known beyond his own circle, and came back a renowned author who had won as much honor for his country as for himself. The little speech which he delivered at the banquet given him in the city of New York, delightfully reveals the innocent astonishment which the young Republic, once so fearful of its future, felt at the mighty pace at which it seemed to be going toward greatness. The modest Irving, unused to speak in public, spoke with faltering voice of his warm and unexpected welcome. But when he came to describe the changes he observed in his native city, the marvelous prosperity that every where met his eyes, his tongue was loosened, and he burst into momentary eloquence.

From the time," said he, " that I approached the coast, I saw indications of the growing greatness of my native city. We had scarce descried the land, when a thousand sails of all descriptions gleaming along the horizon, and all standing to or from one point, showed that we were in the neighborhood of a vast commercial emporium. As I sailed up our beautiful bay, with a heart swelling with old recollections and delightful associations, I was astonished to see its once wild features brightening with populous villages and noble piles, and a teeming city extending itself over heights which I had left covered with groves and forests. But how shall I describe my emotion when our city itself rose to sight, seated in the

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midst of its watery domain, stretching away to a vast extent; when I beheld a glorious sunshine brightening up the spires and domes, some familiar to memory, others new and unknown, and beaming on a forest of masts of every nation, extending as far as the eye could reach. I have gazed with admiration upon many a fair city and stately harbor, but my admiration was cold and ineffectual, for I was a stranger, and had no property in the soil. Here, however, my heart throbbed with pride and joy as I admired. I had birthright in the brilliant scene before me

'This was my own, my native land.'

It has been asked, 'Can I be content to live in this country?' Whoever asks that question must have but an inadequate idea of its blessings and delights. What sacrifice of enjoyments have I to reconcile myself to ? I come from gloomier climates to one of brilliant sunshine and inspiring purity. I come from countries lowering with doubt and danger, where the rich man trembles and the poor man frowns— where all repine at the present and dread the future. I come from these, to a country where all is life and animation; where I hear on every side the sound of exultation; where every one speaks of the past with triumph, the present with delight, the future with growing and confident anticipation. Is this not a community in which one may rejoice to live? Is this not a city by which one may be proud to be received as a son? Is this not a land in which every one may be happy to fix his destiny and ambition, if possible to found a name? I am asked how long I mean to remain here. They know but little of my heart or my feelings who can ask me this question-As long as I live."

Just so the country felt as it read Mr. Irving's glowing sentences in the month of May, 1832.

Before the next month had run its course, a great terror pervaded the continent. The cholera, that had ravaged Europe last year, and spread over America a vague alarm, broke

out in Quebec on the ninth of June. An emigrant ship lost forty-two of her passengers from the disease while crossing the ocean, and seemed to communicate it to the city as soon as she arrived. Swiftly the disease made its southward progressswiftly, but capriciously-leaping here a region, diverging there, sparing some unhealthful localities, and desolating others supposed to be peculiarly salubrious. It reached New York fifteen days after its appearance in Quebec. There was no parade on the fourth of July. Hospitals were hastily prepared in every ward. The cases increased in number for just one month; at the expiration of which three hundred persons daily sickened, and nearly one hundred died, of cholera alone. Grass grew in some of the thoroughfares usually thronged, and whole blocks of stores were closed. By the middle of August, when 2,565 persons had died of the disease, it had so far subsided that the people who had fled began to return, and the city to regain its wonted aspect.*

As the epidemic subsided in New York, it gained further South. It raged in Philadelphia, terrified Baltimore, threatened Washington, and darted malignant influences into the far West. Cincinnati was attacked, and the troops stationed at unknown Chicago did not escape. New Orleans had it, instead of the yellow fever.

As a vulture, brooding in the air, invisible, discerns its prey afar off, and swooping downward seizes it in its horrid talons, unexpected, irresistible, and then, having torn the blood out of its heart, ascends again to the upper air, and surveying once more the outspread land, espies another help

The following paragraph is from the New York Journal of Commerce of July 26th, 1832: "There never was a more delightful exhibition of Christian benevolence than is now witnessed in this city. The generous donations which have been recorded, and which still continue to flow in, form but an item in the general aggregate. Numbers of our most accomplished ladies are engaged, day after day, in making garments for the poor and distressed, while committees of gentlemen, who at home sit on elegant sofas and walk on Brussels carpets, are searching out the abode of poverty, filth, and disease, and administering personally to the wants of the wretched inmates. There is no telling the misery which they often meet with and relieve."

less victim, and rushes down upon it, so did this wayward and terrible cholera seem to select, from day to day, for no reasons that science could penetrate, a fresh town to suddenly affright and desolate.

About the middle of August, the President, accompanied by Mr. Blair and other friends, left Washington for a visit to the Hermitage, and did not return until the nineteenth of October. On this journey it was remarked the President paid his expenses in gold. "No more paper-money, you see, fellow-citizens, if I can only put down this Nicholas Biddle and his monster bank." A telling maneuver in a country of doubtful banks and counterfeit-detectors, distressing to all women, and puzzling to most men. "Ninety-five counterfeits of the bills of the bank of the United States alone," Col. Benton had kept the country in mind of during the late debates. Gold, long since gone out of circulation, was held up to the people as the currency which the administration of General Jackson was struggling to restore. A golden piece of money, as most of us remember, was a curiosity at that time. It was a distinction in country places to possess one. Clay and eternal rag-money, Jackson and speedy gold, was diligently represented to be the issue between the two candidates. Storekeepers responded by announcing themselves as anti-bank hatters, and hard-money bakers. The administration had given the politicians a "good cry" to go before the country with, and it was not allowed to fall to the ground.

Amid the terrors of the cholera, one would have expected to find the presidential campaign carried on with less than the usual spirit. There was a lull in midsummer. But, upon the whole, no contest of the kind was ever conducted with so much energy and so much labor. The pamphlets of the campaign still astonish collectors by their number, their ability, and their size. Against the administration seem to have been arrayed the talent of the country, the great capitalists, the leading men of business, and even the smaller banks, making common cause with the great bank, doomed to quick