Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 | Page 4

enjoys good health, and is a fine, promising
boy." He remained in France till 1792, when his mother's anxiety for
his safety overcame her desire for the completion of his studies, and she
wrote to Gouverneur Morris, who was then in France, to send him
home. "Mr. Jefferson," reads the autograph before me, "presents his
most respectful compliments to Mrs. Greene, and will with great
pleasure write to Mr. Morris on the subject of her son's return,
forwarding her letter at the same time. He thinks Mrs. Greene
concluded that he should return by the way of London. If he is
mistaken, she will be so good as to correct him, as his letter to Mr.
Morris will otherwise be on that supposition." He returned a large,
vigorous, athletic man, full of the scenes he had witnessed, and ready to
engage in active life with the ardor of his age and the high hopes which
his name authorized; for it was in the days of Washington and
Hamilton and Knox, men who extended to the son the love they had
borne to the father. But his first winter was to be given to his home, to
his mother and sisters; and there, while pursuing too eagerly his
favorite sport of duck-shooting from a canoe on the Savannah, his boat
was overset, and, though his companion escaped by clinging to the
canoe, he was borne down by the weight of his accoutrements and
drowned. The next day the body was recovered, and the vault which
but six years before had prematurely opened its doors to receive the
remains of the father was opened again for the son. Not long after, his
family removed to Cumberland Island and ceased to look upon
Savannah as their burial-place; and when, for the first time, after the
lapse of more than thirty years, and at the approach of Lafayette on his
last memorable visit to the United States, a people awoke from their
lethargy and asked where the bones of the hero of the South had been
laid, there was no one to point out their resting-place. Happy, if what
the poet tells us be true, and "still in our ashes live their wonted fires,"
that they have long since mingled irrevocably with the soil of the land
that he saved, and can never become associated with a movement that
has been disgraced by the vile flag of Secession!
But to return to the Rue d'Anjou. A loud noise in the street announced
the approach of the Indians, whose appearance in an open carriage had
drawn together a dense crowd of sight-loving Parisians; and in a few

moments they entered, decked out in characteristic finery, but without
any of that natural grace and dignity which I had been taught to look
for in the natives of the forest. The General received them with the
dignified affability which was the distinctive characteristic of his
manner under all circumstances; and although there was nothing in the
occasion to justify it, I could not help recalling Madame de Staël's
comment upon his appearance at Versailles, on the fearful fifth of
October:--"M. de la Fayette was perfectly calm; nobody ever saw him
otherwise." Withdrawing with them into an inner room, he did his best,
as he afterwards told me, to prevail upon them to return home, though
not without serious doubts of the honesty of their interpreter. It was
while this private conference was going on that I got my first sight of
Cooper,--completing my morning's experience by exchanging a few
words with the man, of all others among my countrymen, whom I had
most wished to know. Meanwhile the table in the dining-room was
spread with cakes and preserves, and before the company withdrew,
they had a good opportunity of convincing themselves, that, if the
American Indian had made but little progress in the other arts of
civilization, he had attained to a full appreciation of the virtues of
sweetmeats and pastry.
I cannot close this portion of my story without relating my second
interview with my aboriginal countrymen, not quite so satisfactory as
the first, but at least with its amusing, or rather its laughable side. I was
living in Siena, a quiet old Tuscan town, with barely fifteen thousand
inhabitants to occupy a circuit of wall that had once held fifty,--but
with all the remains of its former greatness about it, noble palaces, a
cathedral second in beauty to that of Milan alone, churches filled with
fine pictures, an excellent public library, (God's blessing be upon it, for
it was in one of its dreamy alcoves that I first read Dante,) a good opera
in the summer, and good society all the year round. Month was gliding
after month in happy succession. I had dropped readily into