He Was Justus Et Tenax Propositi; And In Periods That Might Well Have Dismayed A Smaller Man, He Feared Neither The Throne To Which He Opposed Himself Nor The Changing Voices Of The Fellow- Citizens For Whose Welfare He Had Fought.

But sixty or seventy years will not suffice to give to a man the fame of having been first among all men.

Washington did much, and I for one do not believe that his work will perish. But I have always found it difficult - I may say impossible - to sound his praises in his own land. Let us suppose that a courteous Frenchman ventures an opinion among Englishmen that Wellington was a great general, would he feel disposed to go on with his eulogium when encountered on two or three sides at once with such observations as the following: "I should rather calculate he was; about the first that ever did live or ever will live. Why, he whipped your Napoleon everlasting whenever he met him. He whipped everybody out of the field. There warn't anybody ever lived was able to stand nigh him, and there won't come any like him again. Sir, I guess our Wellington never had his likes on your side of the water. Such men can't grow in a down-trodden country of slaves and paupers." Under such circumstances the Frenchman would probably be shut up. And when I strove to speak of Washington I generally found myself shut up also.

Arlington Heights, when I was at Washington, was the headquarters of General McDowell, the general to whom is attributed - I believe most wrongfully - the loss of the battle of Bull's Run. The whole place was then one camp. The fences had disappeared. The gardens were trodden into mud. The roads had been cut to pieces, and new tracks made everywhere through the grounds. But the timber still remained. Some no doubt had fallen, but enough stood for the ample ornamentation of the place. I saw placards up, prohibiting the destruction of the trees, and it is to be hoped that they have been spared. Very little in this way has been spared in the country all around.

Mount Vernon, Washington's own residence, stands close over the Potomac, about six miles below Alexandria. It will be understood that the capital is on the eastern, or Maryland side of the river, and that Arlington Heights, Alexandria, and Mount Vernon are in Virginia. The River Potomac divided the two old colonies, or States as they afterward became; but when Washington was to be built, a territory, said to be ten miles square, was cut out of the two States and was called the District of Columbia. The greater portion of this district was taken from Maryland, and on that the city was built. It comprised the pleasant town of Georgetown, which is now a suburb - and the only suburb - of Washington. The portion of the district on the Virginian side included Arlington heights, and went so far down the river as to take in the Virginian City of Alexandria.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 16 of 275
Words from 7708 to 8219 of 142339