Montpelier examiner. [volume] (Montpelier, Idaho) 1895-1937, 1914-02-20

scene. His men were ragged-half
naked, Besides the running ice in the river there
was binding blizzard, and it was so bitter cold
that the chief loss on the American side Of
the men who, though Injured to pioneer hardships
froze to death that awful night
Did General Washington stand in his boat in
that dangerous current during a driving storm
and stare pompousy at the opposite shore? Not
he. Instead of that, he sat tight" and cajoled
the men, using every device that hight make them
forget their terrible situation; telling them
a facetous story, which, coming from him, star
tied them, set their blood tingng and made them
oblivious 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
mander-in-chief, who had come to the continental
congress a 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-
army, while the British amply supplied
with ammunition and might sally forth any hour
against the American 'irregulars."
"some one had blundered." Many a com
mander would have shown up the improvident
officers who had that matter in charge and pee
vishly thrown up the command as ridiculously 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
of justice might be lost. He began quietly
to the country for gunpewder. He
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
mgton's nerve was equal to the fearful strain
During that long, tense interval the American
troops working away upon the Notifications,
preparing for grand attack. Meanwhile the
young commander-in-chief entertaining
Hospitality at his headquarters, the Craige man
sion, now best known "Longfellow's Home" in
Cambridge. AS a pleasant diversion Lady"
Washington, then one Of the wealthiest women In
America came to visit the general, and all the
countryside was agog over her coachand-four 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 expedition gone to Bermuda
for powder, General knox, with a small force,
succeeded in bringing number of cannon sew
eral hundred miles sleds in midwinter
from Fort Ticonderoga. In those times that
tried mems souls it. Washingtons iron
nerve, supported by his broad of humor,
sometimes scintillating with radiance worthy
of a Franklin Lincoln which saved the day.
$ This only one of many occasions on which
Washington had to fight out the revolution alone.
A friend Of Lincoln's said Of him, The
presidents laugh is his lifepreserver" This was
truer of Washington than any one seems to have
realized in day when strict gravity without
Ievity, was expected of public characters To
laugh or to see the humorous side of incident
was considered the sign of a frivolous disposi-
ton
Washington's early biographers were solemn
men. 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 a
boy man ought to have done under given con
ditions.
Washington would have laughed heartily al
Weems' ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS story IL he had
ever heard (which he never did, for It was not
invented till later edition of the erring rector's
juvenile history, six years after Washington's
death. Yet the real hero of the cherry-tree fc
ton would have found it the occasion Of gravity
as well as mirth. In the stflted story of Little
George and His Pa" Weems was only carrying
out the idea of his time to tell not what the small
boy actually did. but what the consummate little
prig he conceived little George Washington tc
have been would have done IL he had cut down his
fathers favorfte cherry tree.
If little George Washington had been the insult
ferable little prig described by Mr.. Weems, hi
half-brothers would. not have loved him bettel
than their own brothers, or their own children
for that matter. His early life fuller Of ex
citing experiences than any fiction. Yet the Ef'
If young Washington is yet to be told as an ad
venture story Even in his quaint little diaries
ne early discloses lively sense Of humor-sav
lge humor sometimes, but broad and boyish. HI
showed this by telling only the jokes against him
self. When he lad Of sixteen he led sur
yeying party lay out the lands of his old friend
lord Fairfax, In the wilderness Of the 5henan
doah Here is one of his own experiences
.tenderfoot," recorded on Tuesday, March Is
1747S:
I'VE got our suppers lighted into
Room, and I, not being so good a Woodsman a
iYe rest of my company, stripped myself very or
M1erly, went into ye Bed they called II
:. Ehen to my surprise found 1t to be nothing bu
little straw-matted together without sheets O.
anything else but one threadbare blanket. witt
iouble its weight of vermin. such as Lice, F1eas
&C
q was glad to get up las soon as ye light wa
carried from u.s. | put my Clothes and lay a