"I hear that you drummed them to victory through a very hell of torture,
Mr. Ritchie," said the General. "It is an honor to grasp the hand of one
who did such service at such a tender age."

General Wilkinson availed himself of that honor, and encompassed me with
a smile so benignant, so winning in its candor, that I could only mutter
my acknowledgment, and Colonel Clark must needs apologize, laughing, for
my youth and timidity.

"Mr. Ritchie is not good at speeches, General," said he, "but I make no
doubt he will drink a bumper to your health before we sit down.
Gentlemen," he cried, filling his glass from a bottle on the table, "a
toast to General Wilkinson, emancipator and saviour of Kentucky!"

The company responded with a shout, tossed off the toast, and sat down at
the long table. Chance placed me between a young dandy from
Lexington--one of several the General had brought in his train--and Mr.
Wharton, a prominent planter of the neighborhood with whom I had a
speaking acquaintance. This was a backwoods feast, though served in
something better than the old backwoods style, and we had venison and
bear's meat and prairie fowl as well as pork and beef, and breads that
came stinging hot from the Dutch ovens. Toasts to this and that were
flung back and forth, and jests and gibes, and the butt of many of these
was that poor Federal government which (as one gentleman avowed) was like
a bantam hen trying to cover a nestful of turkey's eggs, and clucking
with importance all the time. This picture brought on gusts of laughter.

"And what say you of the Jay?" cried one; "what will he hatch?"

Hisses greeted the name, for Mr. Jay wished to enter into a treaty with