Eagle River review. [volume] (Eagle River, Wis.) 1890-1927, 1914-02-13

scene. His were ragged-naI
naked Besides the running ice in the river, there
binding blizzard, and it was 30 bitter cold
that the chief loss on the American side was of
the who though Injured to pioneer hardships.
froze to death that awful night.
Did General Washington stand in his boat in
that dangerous current during driving storm
and stare pompOusly at the opposite shore? Not
he. Instead of that he sat tight and caJoled
the men, using every device that might make them
forget their terrible situation; even telling them
a facetious story, which, coming from him. star
tied them set their blood tingling and made them
Obvious to the cold and dangers around them.
That was the grandest deed in the military STRAIT
agem which made Frederick the Great Of Prussia.
and, indeed the whole world wonder at the
genius of Washington.
Nearly every one knows the outside of the
story of the siege of Boston by the new COM
mander-in-chief, who had come to the continental
congress wealthy Virginia colonel and his
nondescrpt crowd of raw recruits, wholly unused
not only to military discipline, but even to mill
tary forms. But few know of the transcendent
bluff General Washington had to put up when he
discovered that there were but few rounds OF
gunpowder in the possession of the whole Ameri-
can army, while the British were amply supplied
with ammunition and might sally forth any hour
against the American 'irregulars."
Some one had Numbered Many a com
mander would have shown up the improvdent
officers who had that matter in charge and pee
vishly thrown up the command as ridiculousy i'm
possible. But General Washington did not tell his
most trusted officers of the excruciating dilemma
he found himself in. He knew the awful secret
would spread if known to few and the great
cause of justice might be lost. He began quietly
TO scour the country for gunpowder. He soon
found that the nearest place at which any guam
tity could be had was in a magazine on the island
OF Bermuda. To get that required secret expe-
dition, much hazard and many weeks; but Wash
ington's nerve equal to the fearful strain
During that long, tense interval the American
troops were working away upon the Notifications
preparing for a grand attack. Meanwhile the
young commander-n-chief was entertaining
Hospitality at his headquarters, the Craige man
sion, best known "Longfellow's Home" in
Cambridge. AS pleasant diversion Lady"
Washington then of the Weathiest women in
America, to visit the general and all the
countryside was agog over her coach-andfour with
six black positions in white and scarlet livery.
Even the British cooped up in Boston, were i'm
pressed by the resources and apparent confidence
of the American generalissimo
While one expedition gone to Bermuda
for powder, General Knox, with a small force,
succeeded in bringing number Of cannon sew
era hundred miles on OK sledS in midWlnter
from Fort Ticonderoga. In those times that
tried mems souls it was Washngton's iron
nerve, supported by his broad sense of humor,
sometimes scintillating with radiance worthy
OF Franklin Lincoln, which saved the day.
Washington had to fight out the revolution alone
friend of Lincoln's said of him, The
presidents laugh is his life-preserver." This was
truer of Washington than any one seems to have
realized in a day when strict gravity without
levity, was expected of public characters. To
laugh or to see the humorous side of all incident
was considered the sign of frivolous DISPOSE
ton
Washington's early biographers were solemn
To have told in their books how much their
hero laughed would have been, in their opinion.
wantonly exposing his weakness to public gaze.
Men like "Parson" Weems, renegade preacher and
tramp fiddler though he was, had been brought
up TO think that laughing was worse than wick
edit was vulgar!" In straining to make their
hero appear to have been demigod those pedan-
tic biographers related not what George WASH
ington really did, but what they imagined such
boy or man ought to have done under given con-
ditions.
washington would have laughed heartily at
Weems' ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS story if he had
ever heard (which he did, for 1t was not
Invented till later edition of the erring rectors
juvenile history, six years after Washington's
death. Yet the real hero of the cherry-tree hc-
ton would have found it the occasion of gravity
as well as mirth. In the stted story of Little
George and His Pa" Weems was only carrying
out the idea of his time tell not what the small
boy actually did, but what the consummate little
prig he conceived little George Washington to
have been would have done if he had cut down his
fether's favorite cherry tree.
If little George Washington had been the insult
ferable little prig described by Mr. Weems, his
haf-brothers would not have loved him better
than their own brothers, their own children,
for that matter His early life was fuller of ex-
citing experiences than any fiction. Yet the life
OF young Washington is yet to be told an adj
venture story. Even in his quaint little diaries
he early discloses lively sense of humor-sav-
age humor sometimes, but broad and boyish. He
showed this by telling only the jokes against him
self. When he was lad of sixteen he led a sur
veying party to lay the lands of his old friend
Lord Fairfax, in the wilderness of the Shenan-
doah. Here is one of his own experiences g.
''tenderfoot," recorded on Tuesday, March Is.
1747-8:
I'VE got Slippers & was lighted into a
Room, and l. not being so good a Woodsman as
ye rest of my company, stripped myself very or