Nominee Van Buren is elected to succeed the General in the White House, and every friend of the latter votes for the little polite man of Kinderhook. The General is delighted, since the elevation of nominee Van Buren provides for a continuation of his darling policies.
Wizard Lewis is delighted, because the new situation permits the return of himself and his beloved General to their homes by the Cumberland. Nor does it detract from the satisfaction of either that, with the presidential coming of the Kinderhook one, the final door of political hope is barred fast in the faces of Machiavelli Clay and Statesman Calhoun; for both the General and Wizard Lewis hate these two as though that hatred were a religious rite.
At last dawns President Van Buren's inauguration morning, and the General stands for the last time before a people whose good and whose honor he has so jealously guarded. Of this farewell appearance, poet Willis writes:
“_The air was elastic; the day bright and still. More than twenty thousand people had assembled. The procession, the General and Mr. Van Buren riding uncovered, arrived a little after noon. Their carriage, drawn by four grays, paused. Descending from it at the foot of the steps, a passage was made through the crowd, and the tall white head of the old chieftain went steadily up. The crowd of diplomats and senators to the rear gave way. A murmur of feeling rose up from the moving mass below, as the infirm old General, coming as he had from a sick chamber which his physicians had thought it impossible he should leave, stood bowed before the people_.”
In his address the General touches many things. He closes by saying: “My own race is nearly run. Advanced age and failing health warn me that I must soon pass beyond the reach of human events. I thank God my life has been spent in a land of liberty, and that He gave me a heart wherewith to love my country. Filled with gratitude, I bid you farewell.”
CHAPTER XXV--THE GRAVE AT THE GARDEN'S FOOT
THE General wends his slow way homeward, and is two months about the journey. His progress, broken by many stops, is like both a triumph and a funeral; for double ranks of worshipers line the route and sob or cheer as he passes. The harsh horse-face is seamed of care and worn by sickness; but the slim form is still erect and lance-like, and the blue eyes gleam as hawkishly dangerous as when, behind his low mud walls with the faithful Coffee and his hunting-shirt men, he broke down England's pride at New Orleans. Everywhere the people press about him; for republics are not ungrateful, and for once in a way of politics it is the setting, not the rising sun upon which all eyes are centered. In the end he reaches home, and his country of the Cumberland, as on many a former day, opens its arms to receive him.