Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. II.djvu/49

 MARTIN VAN BUREN 27 abroad during his father s presidency, was tall and handsome, of elegant manners and appearance, a charming conversationalist, and an admirable ra conteur. the West&quot; and &quot;Old Tippecanoe&quot;; Tyler, &quot;Accidental President&quot;; Polk, &quot;Young Hickory,&quot; so christened by his admiring adherents of the presidential campaign; Taylor, &quot;Rough and Ready&quot; and &quot;Old Zach&quot;; Fillmore, the &quot;American Louis Philippe,&quot; owing to his digni fied, courteous manners and supposed resemblance to the French king; Pierce, &quot;Poor Pierce,&quot; pronounced Purse; Buchanan, &quot;Old Pub lic Functionary&quot; and &quot;Old Buck&quot;; Lincoln, &quot;Honest Old Abe&quot; and &quot;Father Abraham,&quot; used in the famous war-song, &quot;We re coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand strong&quot;; Johnson, &quot;Sir Veto&quot; and the &quot;Tailor President&quot;; Grant, &quot;Unconditional Surrender,&quot; and by his political adversaries the &quot;American Caesar,&quot; in allusion to his third-term candidacy and their claim that Grantism was a syno nym of Csesarism; Hayes, &quot;President de facto&quot;; Garfield, the &quot;Teach er President&quot; and &quot;Martyr President&quot;; Arthur, &quot;The First Gentle man in the Land,&quot; and by his New York admirers &quot;Our Chet,&quot; a con traction of Chester; Cleveland, the &quot;Man of Destiny&quot; and &quot;Old Grover&quot;; and Benjamin Harrison, &quot;Backbone Ben&quot; and the &quot;Son of his Grandfather,&quot; the latter s hat being a conspicuous object in the campaign cartoons of 1888 and afterward. Kinley in McKinley stands in Gaelic for &quot;the man with the glad countenance,&quot; his popu lar name, and a happy coincidence in the case of William McKinley. His successor was familiarly and universally known as &quot;Teddy.&quot; At the Broadway meeting referred to the poet mentioned a pleas ant visit to Van Buren at Lindenwald, where he had met Washington Irving, and that the latter had written the concluding chapters of his &quot;History of New York&quot; when in retirement there for two months after the death of his betrothed, Miss Matilda Hoffman. At that time (1809) it was the estate of Irving s intimate friend, William P. Van Ness, an eminent lawyer and jurist, who acted as Burr s sec ond in his duel with Hamilton. The ex-president purchased the prop erty, Halleck informed me, from the heirs of Judge Van Ness, and incidentally remarked that he had seen all the presidents except Washington, and had known most of them. The poet also alluded to the circumstance of Irving having been offered by President Van Buren the portfolio of the secretary of the navy, which, on his de clining its acceptance, was conferred on the amiable author s friend