Three young horses, descended from the great Truxton, were brought from the Hermitage to Washington. On a beautiful spring day they were to be tried upon a race-course near the city. Early in the morning of that day, Mr. Blair had occasion to visit the President's office, where he found Major Donelson, booted and spurred, just about to mount and ride away to the race-course to see what the young horses could do.

"Come with us, Blair," said Major Donelson, "it's a fine day, and you'll enjoy it."

"No," said Mr. Blair, "I can't go to day. Besides, I've no horse.”

"Well, get one from a livery stable."

"Not to-day, Major."

"The President, who was in the room, busy over some papers, cried out :

Why, Mr. Blair, take my horse. Donelson, order my horse for Mr. Blair."

The Secretary hesitated, looked confused, and at last stammered out:

"Well, Blair, come on, then."

They walked out together, and on getting to the bottom of the steps, found the General's well known horse already saddled and bridled.

"Why, the General is going himself, then!" exclaimed Mr. Blair.

"He was going," said the Major, sorrowfully, "but he won't go now."

"But let us go back and persuade him." "It will be of no use," said Major Donelson. "He had set his heart upon seeing those colts run to-day. But he has now set his heart upon your going. I know him, Blair. It will only offend him if we say another word about it. He has made up his mind that you shall go, and that he will not. So, mount."

The editorship of the Globe and the congressional printing were important to Mr. Blair; but it was such acts as these

that won his heart. He tells you calmly that General Jackson made his fortune. When he relates stories like this, his voice falters and his eyes moisten.

A lady, who was constantly at the White House during the early part of General Jackson's administration, describes the evening scene in the President's own parlor. She desires to see it painted, and suggests the subject to artists. A large parlor, scantily furnished, lighted from above by a chandelier; a bright, blazing fire in the grate; around the fire four or five ladies sewing, say Mrs. Donelson, Mrs. Andrew Jackson, Mrs. Edward Livingston, and another or two; five or six children, from two to seven years of age, playing about the room, too regardless of documents and work-baskets. At a distant end of the apartment the President, seated in an arm-chair, wearing a long, loose coat, smoking a long, reed pipe, with a red clay bowl, exhibiting the combined dignity of a patriarch, a monarch, and an Indian chief. A little behind the President, Edward Livingston, Secretary of State, reading to him, in a low tone, a dispatch from the French Minister for Foreign Affairs. The President listens intently, yet with a certain bland assurance, as though he were saying to himself, "Say you so, Monsieur ? We shall see about that." The ladies glance toward him, now and then, with fond admiration expressed in their countenances. The children are too loud occasionally in their play. The President inclines his ear closer to the Secretary, and waves his pipe, absently, but with an exquisite smiling tenderness, toward the noisy group, which, Mrs. Donelson perceiving, she lifts her finger and whispers admonition.

CHAPTER XLIII.

CLOSE OF THE ADMINISTRATION.

MR. VAN BUREN had been elected to succeed General Jackson. The administration commanded a majority in both Houses. Mr. Polk, a strenuous and unscrupulous partisan, was speaker of the House of Representatives. The impending session of Congress was the "short" session. The opposition was disheartened, and the President's popularity was undiminished. In these circumstances it would have been reasonable to expect that the last few months of General Jackson's tenure of power would exhibit a lull in the fierce contentions which for eight years had distracted the country.

Those who indulged an expectation of that nature, if any such there were, were disappointed; for strife, acrimony, violence, vituperation, were as much the order of the day at Washington, during this last session of Congress, as they had been during the panic session itself.

The last annual message of General Jackson, remarkable in many respects, differs in one particular from all other papers, public or private, that bear his signature. It announced that Andrew Jackson had changed his mind! The expansion of the business of the country had become alarming. The receipts of the treasury had reached the astounding sum of nearly forty-eight millions of dollars, of which no less than twenty-four millions had accrued from the sale of the public lands; and the balance in the treasury would amount, on the first of January, to little less than forty-two millions. It was this terrible surplus that had awakened the President's apprehensions, and caused a revision of his opinions. He was opposed to any policy which contemplated a surplus, and regretted the passage of the deposit act, to which he had given "a reluctant assent."

The distribution of the surplus among the States, he