266 HILLS AND LAKES. 



country ain't in danger, nor the Union unsafe, and 

 won't be for two hundred years to come. 



"I mind when Gineral Jackson, Old Hickory, as 

 we called him, was runnin' for President, we all went 

 for him in these parts, because he beat the British, 

 and whipped the cussed red-skins. There was a 

 meetin' down to Plattsburgh, and a man came over 

 from Yarmount, to speak to the people. He was a 

 tonguey fellow, and spoke like a book. He talked 

 about the tariff, and the bank, and protection to 

 American labor, and a hundred other things, that he 

 said General Jackson would make a smash of, and 

 wound up by tellin' about this glorious Union bein' 

 in danger, and how it would go to ruin, if the Gineral 

 was elected President, and called upon every honest 

 man to go agin' him. Old Pete Meigs was at the 

 meetin', and I never saw him so riled in my life as he 

 was, to hear the Gineral spoken agin'. When the 

 Yar mounter got through, the old man got onto a bench 

 to answer him. He warn't, as you may suppose, any 

 great shakes at speech-makin', and I don't believe he 

 ever tried it on, but that once, but he had a good deal 

 of nateral sense in him, and could shoot pretty near 

 the mark, whei his back was up. ' Look here, 



