DOCKYMENT.
[ILLUSTRATION]MAJOR DOWNING GETTING OVER A GAP IN HISTORY.
[Description: 688EAF. Page 246. In-line image. A man holding on to a human-sized quill is jumping from a mound labelled "Old Hickory" to one labelled "Young Hickory". In the background is the White House. ]
In the little Postscript to my Life, that heads “My Thirty
Years Out of the Senate,” I said, “There'll be a kind of gap
near the close of Gineral Jackson's time, and for a while
after, because a lot of my letters written at that time was
lost in a fire some years afterward, and I don't suppose I can
now find the papers they was published in. But I will try to
bridge over the gap as well as I can.”
Well, I've got to the gap now, and must try to make a
clean jump of it, from Old Hickory to Young Hickory. I
must bid good-by to my dear old friend, the Gineral, and put
my shoulder to the wheel to help Colonel Polk along through
the Mexican war. I feel bad to part with the old Gineral—a
true man and a true Dimokrat as ever lived—and I am sure
he feels bad to part with me. We worked hard together;
we could conquer nullification, and conquer Biddle's Bank,
but we couldn't head off old Father Time, who conquers us all,
sooner or later. The best friends in the world must part, so
in the nature of things the time must come when Old Hickory
and Major Downing must bid each other farewell. I am sorry
the world has lost them letters of mine that was burnt, for
they contained a good many interesting things, and described
some very pleasant times that the Gineral and I had together.
They told all about cutting off the “figger head” of “Old
Ironsides,” (the frigate Constitution,) in Boston harbor, and
about me and the Gineral going a skating in a bright moonlight
night away down on the Potomac, and a hundred other
matters, that's lost now with the things before the flood. But
Ant Keziah always used to say, “It's no use to cry for spilt
milk;” so I hope the world will dry up its tears, and not
worry any more about my lost letters than it does about that
great library that was burnt in Alexandria two thousand
years ago. The artist has gi'n me a good lift in jumping over.
From the National Intelligencer.
We were thrown quite into a flutter yesterday by receiving
in our bag from the Post-Office the following letter from the
public's old friend, Major Jack Downing, who seems to have
written to us for the purpose of communicating to the public,
in his plain way, some views of President Polk—Young
Hickory, as he delights to call him—which that distinguished
functionary had not thought necessary to confide to his most
confidential friends before he met with the Major:
