Richmond dispatch. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1884-1903, 1885-02-22

for we do not measure the greatness OF
men by the height Of their monuments,
and we know that this distinction may
be done away with here or elsewhere
in future years; but il is memorial
Of the preeminent figure IN modern or
in ancient history, the world over--of
the man who has LEFT the loitiest ex-
ample Of public and private virtues,
and whose exalted character challenges
the admiration and the homage OF man
kind it is this example, and this char
acter-it is the man, and not the monu-
ment. that we are here TO commemo-
rate I! :,
Assembled in these Legislative halls
of the nation, as near TO the anniyer-
sary Of his birth as due respect for
the Day of our Lord will allow, to sig
nalize the long-delayed accomplishment
Of so vast work, it is upon him in
whose honor il has been upreared, and
upon the Incompatible and estimable
services he has rendered to his coun-
try and to the world, that our thoughts
should be concentrated at this hour.
Yet what can | say-what can any
man say--of Washington which has
not already been rendered as familiar
as household gords, not merely to those
who hear me, but to all readers OF his
tory and all lovers Of liberty through
out the world? How could | hope to
CLEAN anything from field long ago so
carefully and lovingly reaped by such
men as John Marshall and Jared Sparks,
by Guizot and Edward Everett and
Washington Irving, as well as by our
eminent living historian, the venerable
George Bancroft, happily here with us
to-day?
Others, many others, whom dare
not attempt to name or number, have
We'd with each other in describing
career of whose minutest details no
American is ever weary, and whose
variety and interest can never be ex-
bausted. Every stage and every step oil
that career, every scene Of that great
and glorious life, from the hour OF his
birth, one hundred and fiity-threc years
ago. about 10 in the morning OF
We llth day Of February, l73l-'32,
as recorded in his mothers Bible--in
that primitive Virginia farmhouse in
the county of Westmoreland. of which
the remains Of the "great brick chin
ney of the kitchen" have been identi-
fled only within a few years past
every scene, ! say. of that grand and
glorious life, from that ever-memOrablc
hour of his nativity, has been traced
and illustrated by the most accom-
plished and brilliant tongues and pens
of our land.
wAsHINGTON'S CHILDHOOD.
His childhood. under the loving
charge of that venerated mother, who
delighted to say that " George had al
ways been good son." who happily
lived, not only to see him safely restored
to her after the exposures and pcrils of
the revolutionary struggle, but to see
him, in her eighty-Second year, mani-
mously elected TO be the President in
peace of the country of which he had
been the saviour in war his primary
education in that :" old-field school
house" with Hobby. the sexton Of
the parish. for his first master
his early and romantic adventures
as a land-survcyor his narrow escape
from being midshipman in the British
navy at fourteen years Of age. for which
a warrant had been obtained and his
luggage actually put on board a man-oI-
war anchored i'll the river just below
Mount Vernon; his still narrower and
hair-breadth escapes from Indian arrows
and from French bullets, and his survi-
yal-thc only mounted officer not
killed-at the defeat Of Braddock. of
whom he was aid-de-camp; together
with that most remarkable prediction Of
the Virginia pastor-Samuel Davies
afterwa.d president Of Princeton College.
pointing him out-in a sermon, in 1855,
on his return, at the age of twenty-three,
from the disastrous field of the MOnOn-
gahela-as that heroic youth, Colonel
Washington. whom cannot but hope
Providence has preserved in so signal a
manner for some important service to
his country who has forgotten.
who can ever forget, these most impress
sive incidents Of that opening career by
which he was indeed so providcntially
preserved, prepared, and trained up for
the cventful and illustrous future which
awaited him:
Still less can any American forget
his taking his seat seon aftcrward in
the Virginia House of Burgesses-Tith
the striking tribute to his modesty which
he won from the Speaker-and his sub
sequent election to the Continental Con-
gress at Philadelphia, where on the 18th
of June, 1915, at the suggestion of John
Adams and on the motion of Thomas
johnson, afterward Governor of Mary
land, he was unanimously appointed
" General and Commander chief
of such forces as are, or shall be,
raised for the maintenance and prescr-
walton of American liberty" Nor
can any of us require to be reminded
of the heroic foriitudc. the answering
constancy, and the unsparing sclf-dcyo-
ton with which he conducted through
seven or eight years that protractcd
contest. with all its tolls and trials, its
veXations and yiciSsitudes, from the
successful siege of Boston, his first
great triumph, followed by those mas
terly movements Oh the Delaware
which no less celebrated soldier
that Frederick the Great declared - the
most brilliant achievements OF any re-
corded in the annals Of military action"
and so along, through all the successes
and reyerses and suiferingS and trials of
Monmouth and Brandywine and Ger
mantown and Valley Forge, to the seige
Of Yorktown, in 1881, where, with the
aid Of our generous and gallant allies
under the lead Of Rochambeau and De
Grasse and Lafayette. he WOE at last
that browning victory on the soil Of his
beloved Virginia.
STILL NOBLER TRirMPHs.
Nor need recall to you the still no.
hler t,iuunhS ,r;tnaccod dur;nu oil this