GEORGE WASHINGTON
On the 4th of March, 1797, Washington went to the inauguration of
his successor as President of the United States. The Federal
Government was sitting in Philadelphia at that time and Congress
held sessions in the courthouse on the corner of Sixth and Chestnut
Streets.
At the appointed hour Washington entered the hall followed by John
Adams, who was to take the oath of office. When they were seated
Washington arose and introduced Mr. Adams to the audience, and then
proceeded to read in a firm clear voice his brief valedictory--not
his great "Farewell Address," for that had already been published. A
lady who sat on "the front bench," "immediately in front" of
Washington describes the scene in these words:
"There was a narrow passage from the door of entrance to the room.
General Washington stopped at the end to let Mr. Adams pass to the
chair. The latter always wore a full suit of bright drab, with loose
cuffs to his coat. General Washington's dress was a full suit of
black. His military hat had the black cockade. There stood the
'Father of his Country' acknowledged by nations the first in war,
first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen. No
marshals with gold-coloured scarfs attended him; there was no
cheering, no noise; the most profound silence greeted him as if the
great assembly desired to hear him breathe. Mr. Adams covered his
face with both his hands; the sleeves of his coat and his hands were
covered with tears. Every now and then there was a suppressed sob. I
cannot describe Washington's appearance as I felt it--perfectly
composed and self-possessed till the close of his address. Then when
strong, nervous sobs broke loose, when tears covered the faces, then
the great man was shaken. I never took my eyes from his face. Large
drops came from his eyes. He looked as if his heart was with them,
and would be to the end."
On Washington's retirement from the Presidency one of his first
employments was to arrange his papers and letters. Then on returning
to his home the venerable master found many things to repair. His
landed estate comprised eight thousand acres, and was divided into
farms, with enclosures and farm-buildings. And now with body and
mind alike sound and vigorous, he bent his energies to directing the
improvements that marked his last days at Mount Vernon.
In his earlier as well as in later life, his tour of the farms would
average from eight to twelve or fourteen miles a day. He rode upon
his farms entirely unattended, opening his gates, pulling down and
putting up his fences as he passed, visiting his labourers at their
work, inspecting all the operations of his extensive establishment
with a careful eye, directing useful improvements and superintending
them in their progress.
He usually rode at a moderate pace in passing through his fields.
But when behind time this most punctual of men would display the
horsemanship of his earlier days, and a hard gallop would bring him
up to time so that the sound of his horse's hoofs and the first
dinner bell would be heard together at a quarter before three.
A story is told that one day an elderly stranger meeting a
Revolutionary worthy out hunting, a long-tried and valued friend of
the chief, accosted him, and asked whether Washington was to be
found at the mansion house, or whether he was off riding over his
estate. The friend answered that he was visiting his farms, and
directed the stranger the road to take, adding, "You will meet, sir,
with an old gentleman riding alone in plain drab clothes, a broad-
brimmed white hat, a hickory switch in his hand, and carrying an
umbrella with a long staff, which is attached to his saddle-bow--
that person, sir, is General Washington."
Precisely at a quarter before three the industrious farmer returned,
dressed, and dined at three o'clock. At this meal he ate heartily,
but was not particular in his diet with the exception of fish, of
which he was excessively fond. Touching his liking for fish, and
illustrative of his practical economy and abhorrence of waste and
extravagance, an anecdote is told of the time he was President and
living in Philadelphia. It happened that a single shad had been
caught in the Delaware, and brought to the city market. His steward,
Sam Fraunces, pounced upon the fish with the speed of an osprey,
delighted that he had secured a delicacy agreeable to the palate of
his chief, and careless of the expense, for which the President had
often rebuked him.
When the fish was served Washington suspected the steward had
forgotten his order about expenditure for the table and said to
Fraunces, who stood at his post at the sideboard, "What fish is
this?" "A shad, sir, a very fine shad," the steward answered. "I
know your excellency is particularly fond of this kind of fish, and
was so fortunate as to procure this one--the only one in market,
sir, the first of the season." "The price, sir, the price?" asked
Washington sternly. "Three--three dollars," stammered the
conscience-stricken steward. "Take it away," thundered the chief,
"take it away, sir! It shall never be said that my table set such an
example of luxury and extravagance." Poor Fraunces tremblingly did
as he was told, and the first shad of the season was carried away
untouched to be speedily discussed in the servants' dining room.
Although the Farmer of Mount Vernon was much retired from the
business world, he was by no means inattentive to the progress of
public affairs. When the post bag arrived, he would select his
letters and lay them aside for reading in the seclusion of his
library. The newspapers he would peruse while taking his single cup
of tea (his only supper) and read aloud passages of peculiar
interest, remarking the matter as he went along. He read with
distinctness and precision. These evenings with his family always
ended at precisely nine o'clock, when he bade everyone good night
and retired to rest, to rise again at four and renew the same
routine of labour and enjoyment.
Washington's last days, like those that preceded them in the course
of a long and well-spent life, were devoted to constant and careful
employment. His correspondence both at home and abroad was immense.
Yet no letter was unanswered. One of the best-bred men of his time,
Washington deemed it a grave offence against the rules of good
manners and propriety to leave letters unanswered. He wrote with
great facility, and it would be a difficult matter to find another
who had written so much, who had written so well. General Harry Lee
once observed to him, "We are amazed, sir, at the vast amount of
work you get through." Washington answered, "Sir, I rise at four
o'clock, and a great deal of my work is done while others sleep."
He was the most punctual of men, as we said. To this admirable
quality of rising at four and retiring to rest at nine at all
seasons, this great man owed his ability to accomplish mighty
labours during his long and illustrious life. He was punctual in
everything and made everyone about him punctual. So careful a man
delighted in always having about him a good timekeeper. In
Philadelphia, the first President regularly walked up to his
watchmaker's to compare his watch with the regulator. At Mount
Vernon the active yet punctual farmer invariably consulted the dial
when returning from his morning ride, and before entering his house.
The affairs of the household took order from the master's accurate
and methodical arrangement of time. Even the fisherman on the river
watched for the cook's signal when to pull in shore and deliver his
catch in time for dinner.
Among the picturesque objects on the Potomac, to be seen from the
eastern portion of the mansion house, was the light canoe of the
house's fisher. Father Jack was an African, an hundred years of age,
and although enfeebled in body by weight of years, his mind
possessed uncommon vigour. And he would tell of days long past when,
under African suns, he was made captive, and of the terrible battle
in which his royal sire was slain, the village burned, and himself
sent to the slave ship.
Father Jack had in a considerable degree a leading quality of his
race--somnolency. Many an hour could the family of Washington see
the canoe fastened to a stake, with the old fisherman bent nearly
double enjoying a nap, which was only disturbed by the jerking of
the white perch caught on his hook. But, as we just said, the
domestic duties of Mount Vernon were governed by clock time, and the
slumbers of fisher Jack might occasion inconvenience, for the cook
required the fish at a certain hour, so that they might be served
smoking hot precisely at three. At times he would go to the river
bank and make the accustomed signals, and meet with no response. The
old fisherman would be quietly reposing in his canoe, rocked by the
gentle undulations of the stream, and dreaming, no doubt, of events
"long time ago." The importunate master of the kitchen, grown
ferocious by delay, would now rush up and down the water's edge,
and, by dint of loud shouting, cause the canoe to turn its prow to
the shore. Father Jack, indignant at its being supposed he was
asleep at his post, would rate those present on his landing, "What
you all meek such a debil of a noise for, hey? I wa'nt sleep, only
noddin'."
The establishment of Mount Vernon employed a perfect army of
domestics; yet to each one was assigned special duties, and from
each one strict performance was required. There was no confusion
where there was order, and the affairs of this estate, embracing
thousands of acres and hundreds of dependents, were conducted with
as much ease, method and regularity as the affairs of a homestead of
average size.
Mrs. Washington was an accomplished house-wife of the olden time,
and she gave constant attention to all matters of her household, and
by her skill and management greatly contributed to the comfort and
entertainment of the guests who enjoyed the hospitality of her home.
The best charities of life were gathered round Washington in the
last days at Mount Vernon. The love and veneration of a whole people
for his illustrious services, his generous and untiring labours in
the cause of public utility; his kindly demeanour to his family
circle, his friends, and numerous dependents; his courteous and
cordial hospitality to his guests, many of them strangers from far
distant lands; these charities, all of which sprang from the heart,
were the ornament of his declining years and granted the most
sublime scene in nature, when human greatness reposes upon human
happiness.
On the morning of the 17th of December, 1799, the General was
engaged in making some improvements in the front of Mount Vernon. As
was usual with him, he carried his own compass, noted his
observations, and marked out the ground. The day became rainy, with
sleet, and the improver remained so long exposed to the inclemency
of the weather as to be considerably wetted before his return to the
house. About one o'clock he was seized with chilliness and nausea,
but having changed his clothes he sat down to his indoor work. At
night, on joining his family circle, he complained of a slight
indisposition. Upon the night of the following day, having borne
acute suffering with composure and fortitude, he died.
In person Washington was unique. He looked like no one else. To a
stature lofty and commanding he united a form of the manliest
proportions, and a dignifed, graceful, and imposing carriage. In the
prime of life he stood six feet, two inches. From the period of the
Revolution there was an evident bending in his frame so passing
straight before, but the stoop came from the cares and toils of that
arduous contest rather than from years. For his step was firm, his
appearance noble and impressive long after the time when the
physical properties of men are supposed to wane.
A majestic height was met by corresponding breadth and firmness. His
whole person was so cast in nature's finest mould as to resemble an
ancient statue, all of whose parts unite to the perfection of the
whole. But with all its development of muscular power, Washington's
form had no look of bulkiness, and so harmonious were its
proportions that he did not appear so tall as his portraits have
represented. He was rather spare than full during his whole life.
The strength of Washington's arm was shown on several occasions. He
threw a stone from the bed of the stream to the top of the Natural
Bridge, Virginia, and another stone across the Rappahannock at
Fredericksburg. The stone was said to be a piece of slate about the
size of a dollar with which he spanned the bold river, and it took
the ground at least thirty yards on the other side. Many have since
tried this feat, but none have cleared the water.
In 1772 some young men were contending at Mount Vernon in the
exercise of pitching the bar. The Colonel looked on for a time, then
grasping the missile in his master hand he whirled the iron through
the air and it fell far beyond any of its former limits. "You see,
young gentlemen," said the chief with a smile, "that my arm yet
retains some portion of my early vigour." He was then in his
fortieth year and probably in the fullness of his physical powers.
Those powers became rather mellowed than decayed by time, for "his
age was like lusty winter, frosty yet kindly," and up to his sixty-
eighth year he mounted a horse with surprising agility and rode with
ease and grace. Rickets, the celebrated equestrian, used to say, "I
delight to see the General ride and make it a point to fall in with
him when I hear he is out on horseback--his seat is so firm, his
management so easy and graceful that I who am an instructor in
horsemanship would go to him and learn to ride."
In his later days, the General, desirous of riding pleasantly,
procured from the North two horses of a breed for bearing the
saddle. They were well to look at, and pleasantly gaited under the
saddle, but also scary and therefore unfitted for the service of one
who liked to ride quietly on his farm, occasionally dismounting and
walking in his fields to inspect improvements. From one of these
horses the General sustained a fall--probably the only fall he ever
had from a horse in his life. It was upon a November evening, and he
was returning from Alexandria to Mount Vernon with three friends and
a groom. Having halted a few moments he dismounted, and upon rising
in his stirrup again, the horse, alarmed at the glare from a fire
near the road-side, sprang from under his rider who came heavily to
the ground. His friends rushed to give him assistance, thinking him
hurt. But the vigorous old man was upon his feet again, brushing the
dust from his clothes, and after thanking those who came to his aid
said that he had had a very complete tumble, and that it was owing
to a cause no horseman could well avoid or control--that he was only
poised in his stirrup, and had not yet gained his saddle when the
scary animal sprang from under him.
Bred in the vigorous school of frontier warfare, "the earth for his
bed, his canopy the heavens," Washington excelled the hunter and
woodsman in their athletic habits and in those trials of manhood
which filled the hardy days of his early life. He was amazingly
swift of foot, and could climb steep mountains seemingly without
effort. Indeed in all the tests of his great physical powers he
appeared to make little effort. When he overthrew the strong man of
Virginia in wrestling, upon a day when many of the finest athletes
were engaged in the contest, he had retired to the shade of a tree
intent upon the reading of a book. It was only after the champion of
the games strode through the ring calling for nobler antagonists,
and taunting the reader with the fear that he would be thrown, that
Washington closed his book. Without taking off his coat he calmly
observed that fear did not enter his make-up; then grappling with
the champion he hurled him to the ground. "In Washington's lion-like
grasp," said the vanquished wrestler, "I became powerless, and went
down with a force that seemed to jar the very marrow in my bones."
The victor, regardless of shouts at his success, leisurely retired
to his shade, and again took up his book.
Washington's powers were chiefly in his limbs. His frame was of
equal breadth from the shoulders to the hips. His chest was not
prominent but rather hollowed in the centre. He never entirely
recovered from a pulmonary affection from which he suffered in early
life. His frame showed an extraordinary development of bone and
muscle; his joints were large, as were his feet; and could a cast of
his hand have been preserved, it would be ascribed to a being of a
fabulous age. Lafayette said, "I never saw any human being with so
large a hand as the General's."
Of the awe and reverence which the presence of Washington inspired
we have many records. "I stood," says one writer, "before the door
of the Hall of Congress in Philadelphia when the carriage of the
President drew up. It was a white coach, or rather of a light cream
colour, painted on the panels with beautiful groups representing the
four seasons. As Washington alighted and, ascending the steps,
paused on the platform, he was preceded by two gentleman bearing
large white wands, who kept back the eager crowd that pressed on
every side. At that moment I stood so near I might have touched his
clothes; but I should as soon have thought of touching an electric
battery. I was penetrated with deepest awe. Nor was this the feeling
of the school-boy I then was. It pervaded, I believe, every human
being that approached Washington; and I have been told that even in
his social hours, this feeling in those who shared them never
suffered intermission. I saw him a hundred times afterward but never
with any other than the same feeling. The Almighty, who raised up
for our hour of need a man so peculiarly prepared for its whole
dread responsibility, seems to have put a stamp of sacredness upon
his instrument. The first sight of the man struck the eye with
involuntary homage and prepared everything around him to obey.
"At the time I speak of he stood in profound silence and had the
statue-like air which mental greatness alone can bestow. As he
turned to enter the building, and was ascending the staircase to the
Congressional hall, I glided along unseen, almost under the cover of
the skirts of his dress, and entered into the lobby of the House
which was in session to receive him.
"At Washington's entrance there was a most profound silence. House,
lobbies, gallery, all were wrapped in deepest attention. And the
souls of the entire assemblage seemed peering from their eyes as the
noble figure deliberately and unaffectedly advanced up the broad
aisle of the hall between ranks of standing senators and members,
and slowly ascended the steps leading to the speaker's chair.
"The President having seated himself remained in silence, and the
members took their seats, waiting for the speech. No house of
worship was ever more profoundly still than that large and crowded
chamber.
"Washington was dressed precisely as Stuart has painted him in full-
length portrait--in a full suit of the richest black velvet, with
diamond knee-buckles and square silver buckles set upon shoes
japanned with most scrupulous neatness; black silk stockings, his
shirt ruffled at the breast and waist, a light dress sword, his hair
profusely powdered, fully dressed, so as to project at the sides,
and gathered behind in a silk bag ornamented with a large rose of
black ribbon. He held his cocked hat, which had a large black
cockade on one side of it, in his hand, as he advanced toward the
chair, and when seated, laid it on the table.
"At length thrusting his hand within the side of his coat, he drew
forth a roll of manuscript which he opened, and rising read in a
rich, deep, full, sonorous voice his opening address to Congress.
His enunciation was deliberate, justly emphasised, very distinct,
and accompanied with an air of deep solemnity as being the utterance
of a mind conscious of the whole responsibility of its position, but
not oppressed by it. There was ever about the man something which
impressed one with the conviction that he was exactly and fully
equal to what he had to do. He was never hurried; never negligent;
but seemed ever prepared for the occasion, be it what it might. In
his study, in his parlour, at a levee, before Congress, at the head
of the army, he seemed ever to be just what the situation required.
He possessed, in a degree never equalled by any human being I ever
saw, the strongest, most ever-present sense of propriety."
In the early part of Washington's administration, great complaints
were made by political opponents of the aristocratic and royal
demeanour of the President. Particularly, these complaints were
about the manner of his receiving visitors. In a letter Washington
gave account of the origin of his levees: "Before the custom was
established," he wrote, "which now accommodates foreign characters,
strangers and others, who, from motives of curiosity, respect for
the chief magistrate, or other cause, are induced to call upon me, I
was unable to attend to any business whatever; for gentlemen,
consulting their own convenience rather than mine, were calling
after the time I rose from breakfast, and often before, until I sat
down to dinner. This, as I resolved not to neglect my public duties,
reduced me to the choice of one of these alternatives: either to
refuse visits altogether, or to appropriate a time for the reception
of them. ... To please everybody was impossible. I therefore,
adopted that line of conduct which combined public advantage with
private convenience. ... These visits are optional, they are made
without invitation; between the hours of three and four every
Tuesday I am prepared to receive them. Gentlemen, often in great
numbers, come and go, chat with each other, and act as they please.
A porter shows them into the room, and they retire from it when they
choose, without ceremony. At their first entrance they salute me,
and I them, and as many as I can I talk to."
An English gentleman after visiting President Washington wrote,
"There was a commanding air in his appearance which excited respect
and forbade too great a freedom toward him, independently of that
species of awe which is always felt in the moral influence of a
great character. In every movement, too, there was a polite
gracefulness equal to any met with in the most polished individuals
of Europe, and his smile was extraordinarily attractive. ... It
struck me no man could be better formed for command. A stature of
six feet, a robust but well--proportioned frame calculated to stand
fatigue, without that heaviness which generally attends great
muscular strength and abates active exertion, displayed bodily power
of no mean standard. A light eye and full-the very eye of genius and
reflection. His nose appeared thick, and though it befitted his
other features was too coarsely and strongly formed to be the
handsomest of its class. His mouth was like no other I ever saw: the
lips firm, and the under-jaw seeming to grasp the upper with force,
as if its muscles were in full action when he sat still."
Such Washington appeared to those who saw and knew him. Such he
remains to our vision. His memory is held by us in undying honour.
Not only his memory alone but also the memory of his associates in
the struggle for American Independence. Homage we should have in our
hearts for those patriots and heroes and sages who with humble means
raised their native land-now our native land--from the depths of
dependence, and made it a free nation. And especially for
Washington, who presided over the nation's course at the beginning
of the great experiment in self-government and, after an unexampled
career in the service of freedom and our humankind, with no dimming
of august fame, died calmly at Mount Vernon--the Father of his
Country.