The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1913-07-04

buke for careiessness or neglect or
any slackness in the performance of
duty. Men who had cheated or
sought to impose upon him deemed
him harsh and called him hard mas
ter, so sharply did they smart after
he had reckoned with them.
Washington exacted the uttermDst
farthing. But he spent it, with the
other hand, to relieve genuine suffer
ing and real want, though it were de-
served and the fruit of a crying fault.
In his home dealings, as in every
thing else, his mind kept that trait by
which men had been awed in the
camp-that trick, as if of Fate, of let
ting every act come at it's conse-
quences and its full punishment or re-
ward, as if he but presided at a proc
ess which was just Natures own.
When he succored distress, he did
it in pity, not in justice-nOt eXcusing
fault, but giving leave to mercy. If
he urged the government to pension
and reward the soldiers OF the war,
who had only done their duty, he him
self set an example.
Rewarded for Service.
There were black pensioners not a
few about his own homestead. Bishop,
his old body-servant, lived like a re-
tired gentleman in his cottage there;
even Nelson, the good sorrei who had
borne him so bravely in the field till
Yorktown, now went forever unsad-
died, free in his own pasture.
But, much as he loved his home
and courted retirement amidst the du-
ties of planter, the old life would not
come back, was gone forever.
He was too famous, and there was
an end on it. He could not go abroad
without drawing crowds about him.
If he attended service on a Sunday
away from home, though it were in
never so quiet parish, the very walls
Of the church groaned threateningly
under the unaccustomed weight of
people gathered in the galleries and
packed upon the floor to see the hero
of the Revolution. Not even a ride
into the far west, to view his lands
and pull together his neglected bust
take him beyond the reach of public
affairs
A Trip Into the West.
On the LIST of September, 1884, with
DR.. Craik for company, he set out on
horseback to go by Braddocks road
again into the west.
For nearly five weeks he was deep
in the wilderness, riding close upon
seven hundred miles through the for
ested mountains, and along the remote
courses of the long rivers that ran in
to the mississippi camping out as in
the old days when he was a surveyor
and soldier in his premiership in
these very wilds; renewing his zest
for the rough life and the sudden adj
ventures of the frontiersman.
But, though he had come upon his
own business, it was the seat of a fu-
ture empire he saw rather than his
own acres scattered here and there.
A Different Washington.
When last he had ridden the long
stages from settlement to settlement
and cabin to cabin in this far country
of the Ohio, he had been a Virginian
and nothing more, colonial colonel
merely, come to pick out lands for his
comrades and himself, their reward
for serving the crown against the
French.
A transformation had been worked
upon him since then.
He had led the armies of the whole
country; had been the chief instru.
ment of a new nation in winning indie
pendence; had carried it's affairs by
his own cOunsels as no other man had
done; had seen through all the
watches of those long campaigns the
destinies and the hope that were at
stake Now he saw the crowding i'm
migrants come into the west with a
new solicitude he had not felt before.
A new vision was in his thought.
This western country was now
rising world" to be kept or lost,
husbanded or squandered, by the raw
nation he had helped put upon its
feet. His thought was stretched at
last to a continental measure; prob.
lens of craftsmanship that were ma.
tional, questions of policy that had
scope great as schemes of empire,
stood foremost in his view.
He returned home more engrossed
than ever by interests not his own,
but central to public affairs, and of
the very stuff of politics.
A Stream of Letters.
And so not the letters merely which
poured in with every mail, not only
his host of visitors, great and small
the governor of the state, the presi-
dent of congress, foreign noblemen.
soldiers, diplomatists, travellers, neigh
bors, friends, acquaintance, intruders
but his own unbidden thoughts as
well, and the very suggestions of his
own interest as a land citizen and
landowner, drew him from his dreams