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Show MADE BY TAILOR RESIDENT. A "Freedom Suit" Made by Andrew Johnson. Do boys of this generation know what a "freedom suit" is? In the old days, a ' boy's twenty-first birthday the . day when he struck out for himself was re-I re-I garded as an important one. His father, 'or his master if he had been appren-, appren-, ticed. sent him forth witn at least one possession essential to a fair start in life , j a good suit of clothes. This was the I young man's freedom suit. The Jackson j (Ind.) Clarion-Ledger tells of a respected old man in that state, who has been sheriff and has served in the legislature, legisla-ture, whose freedom suit was made by a man afterward president of the United Unit-ed States. He was brought up In Tennessee, Ten-nessee, in the town of Greenville. This is how he tells the story of his suit: "About a fortnight before 'attaining my majority' my father told me to go to Andy Johnson's and pick out the best piece of cloth in his shop for a suit of clothes. 'That,' he said, 'will be about the last thing I can do for you. You're a man now. and must shift for yourself.' I 'shifted' to Indiana a year later. "That suit was of dark brown broadclotha broad-clotha swallow-tailed coat, with plain metal buttons on it. a very wide collar of velvet to match, and a waistcoat double-breasted and long enough and loose enough for two of me. I can see Andy now, as he stood me up on the block to measure, me for my trousers h big. . flabby face, swarthy skin, heavy eyebrows, and . a forbidding scowl. That was in the winter of 18:12. and Andrew Jackson was president. Andy, the tailor, never dreamed, as he pressed off that suit of mine and gathered in his $29 for it, that he would himself follow Jackson Jack-son into the White House thirty-three years later. "My suit wore well, and I was married mar-ried in it in 1S3S. It served me for Sunday Sun-day 'dress-u' until I got too stout to button but-ton it about me." |