Watterson, Henry, 1840-1921 / 2008-09-20 00:00:00

There was in particular a little old
bald-headed gentleman who was good to me and would put his arm about me and
stroll with me across the rotunda to the Library of Congress and get
me books to read. I was not so young as not to know that he was an
ex-President of the United States, and to realize the meaning of it. He had
been the oldest member of the House when my father was the youngest. He was
John Quincy Adams. By chance I was on the floor of the House when he fell
in his place, and followed the excited and tearful throng when they bore
him into the Speaker's Room, kneeling by the side of the sofa with an
improvised fan and crying as if my heart would break.
One day in the spring of 1851 my father took me to a little hotel on
Pennsylvania Avenue near the Capitol and into a stuffy room, where a snuffy
old man wearing an ill-fitting wig was busying himself over a pile of
documents. He turned about and was very hearty.
"Aha, you've brought the boy," said he.
And my father said: "My son, you wanted to see General Cass, and here he
is."
My enthusiasm over the Cass and Butler campaign had not subsided.
Inevitably General Cass was to me the greatest of heroes. My father had
been and always remained his close friend. Later along we dwelt together at
Willard's Hotel, my mother a chaperon for Miss Belle Cass, afterward Madame
Von Limbourg, and I came into familiar intercourse with the family.
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