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President Jackson accepted the present and the compliment, and made a brief response. Whether he left it "to the most

worthy," at his decease, or where it is now, we have no information.

Washington carried with him to Mount Vernon, with

the key of the Bastile, a pair of elegant pistols, which, with equally elegant holsters, had been presented to him by the Count de Moustier, the French minister, as a

token of his personal regard. These weapons, it is believed, are the ones presented by Washington to Col. Samuel Hay, of the tenth Pennsylvanian regiment, who stood high in the esteem of his general. They bear the well-known cipher of Washington, and were purchased at the sale of Colonel Hay's effects, after his death in November, 1803, by John Y. Baldwin, of Newark, New Jersey. His son, J. O. Baldwin, presented one of them to Isaac I. Greenwood, of New York, in 1825, in whose possession it remains, the other having been lost on the occasion of a fire which destroyed the residence of his mother. Our engraving represents the preserved one.

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WASHINGTON'S PISTOL.

Mr. Baldwin relates the following anecdote in connection with these pistols:- "When I was a boy," he says, "my father

would frequently take up the Aurora, a newspaper then published in Philadelphia, and marking off about twenty lines, would say, 'Now, Joseph, if you read those correctly, and without a single mistake, you shall fire off one of Washington's pistols.' Such a promise was a high incentive, and if the task was fairly accomplished, my mother would take off her thimble to measure the charge, and my father, having loaded the pistol, I would go to the backdoor with an exulting heart, and lifting the weapon on high, tightly grasped with both hands, pull the trigger."

While at Mount Vernon in the autumn of 1790, Washington received from the Count D'Estaing a small bust of M. Necker, the French minister of finance, or comptroller-general, when the French Revolution broke out in 1789. James Necker was a native of Geneva, in Switzerland. He went to France as ambassador for the republic, where, in 1765, he obtained the office of syndic to the East India Company, and in 1775 was made director of the royal treasury. He exhibited such virtue of character, and such eminent abilities, that twice, though a foreigner, he was made prime minister of France. He was popular with the people at the breaking out of the French Revolution, but that storm was so variable and fickle, that he returned to Switzerland, where he remained until his death, which occurred in 1804, at the age of seventy-two years. His daughter married Baron de Staël Holstein, a Swedish ambassador at the court of France. She was the Madame de Staël so well known in the world of letters.

The little bust of Necker sent by D'Estaing to Washington, is upon a bracket over the fireplace in the library at Mount Vernon, where the President placed it himself. Upon

the tall pedestal are two brass plates, bearing inscriptions, and also a small plate upon the lower part of the bust itself. On the latter is only the name of

NECKER.

Upon the upper plate on the pedestal are the words:

QUI NOBIS RESTITUIT REM.

Upon the second or lower plate is inscribed:

PRESENTED TO

GEORGE WASHINGTON,

PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

BY HIS MOST DUTIFUL, MOST OBEDIENT, AND MOST HUMBLE
SERVANT, ESTAING, A CITIZEN OF THE STATE OF
GEORGIA, BY AN ACT OF 22D FEB., 1785,
AND A CITIZEN OF FRANCE IN 1786.

Count D'Estaing, who had twice commanded a French fleet on our coast, in co-operation with American land forces, became a member of the Assembly of Notables in the early part of the French Revolution, and being suspected of an unfriendly feeling toward the Terrorists, he was destroyed by the guillotine, on the 29th of April, 1793.

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In a letter to Tobias Lear, (then in New York,) dated at Mount Vernon on the 3d of August, 1790, Washington requests him, when able to get at Count D'Estaing's letters (which, with others, had been packed for removal from New York to Philadelphia), to send him a transcript of what the Count says of a bust of M. Necker he had sent to him, together with a number of prints of Necker and Lafayette.

Upon another bracket in the library at Mount Vernon, not far from the little head of Necker, is a full-size bust of Lafayette, a copy of the one in the capitol at Richmond made by Houdon, by order of the legislature of the state of Virginia, in 1786, which was executed under the direction of Mr. Jefferson, then American minister in Paris. The legisla

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BUST OF M. NECKER.

ture of Virginia also ordered a copy to be made and presented to the city of Paris. This fact was made known to the authorities there, by Mr. Jefferson, in the following words:

"The legislature of the state of Virginia, in consideration of the services of Major-General the Marquis de Lafayette, has resolved to place his bust in their capitol. This intention of erecting a monument to his virtues, and to the sentiments with which he has inspired them, in the country to which they are

indebted for his birth, has induced a hope that the city of Paris would consent to become the depository of a second proof of their gratitude. Charged by the state with the

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execution of this resolution, I have the honor to solicit the Prévot des Marchands and municipality of Paris to accept the bust of this brave officer, and give it a situation where it may continually awaken the admiration and witness the respect of the allies of France.

'Dated [at Paris] 17th September. 1786."

"THOS. JEFFERSON.

The Prévot soon received a letter from the Baron de Bre teuil, minister and secretary of state for the department of Paris, informing him that the king, to whom the proposition had been submitted, approved of the bust being erected in the

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