He was of my own age.

I was planning the good time we were going to have in the White House when tidings came that he had been killed in a railway accident.

It was a grievous blow, from which the stricken mother never recovered.

One of the most vivid memories and altogether the saddest episode of my childhood is that a few weeks later I was carried up to the Executive Mansion, which, all formality and marble, seemed cold enough for a mausoleum, where a lady in black took me in her arms and convulsively held me there, weeping as if her heart would break.
V Sometimes a fancy, rather vague, comes to me of seeing the soldiers go off to the Mexican War and of making flags striped with pokeberry juice--somehow the name of the fruit was mingled with that of the President--though a visit quite a year before to The Hermitage, which adjoined the farm of an uncle, to see General Jackson is still uneffaced.
I remember it vividly.

The old hero dandled me in his arms, saying "So this is Harvey's boy," I looking the while in vain for the "hickory," of which I had heard so much.
On the personal side history owes General Jackson reparation.