But they knew that the rod attracted the lightning, and so they gave the place a wide berth in a storm, for they were familiar with marksmanship and doubted if the lightning could hit that small stick at a distance of a mile and a half oftener than once in a hundred and fifty times.

Hawkins fitted out his house with "store" furniture from St.Louis, and the fame of its magnificence went abroad in the land.

Even the parlor carpet was from St.Louis--though the other rooms were clothed in the "rag" carpeting of the country.

Hawkins put up the first "paling" fence that had ever adorned the village; and he did not stop there, but whitewashed it.
His oil-cloth window-curtains had noble pictures on them of castles such as had never been seen anywhere in the world but on window-curtains.
Hawkins enjoyed the admiration these prodigies compelled, but he always smiled to think how poor and, cheap they were, compared to what the Hawkins mansion would display in a future day after the Tennessee Land should have borne its minted fruit.

Even Washington observed, once, that when the Tennessee Land was sold he would have a "store" carpet in his and Clay's room like the one in the parlor.