The Rice belt journal. (Welsh, Calcasieu Parish, La.) 1900-19??, 1914-02-13


~&2SsEA" tide of the revolution in the right
II direction But no painter could
l.AS--AI delineate the heroism OF the actual
scene His men were ragged-haf
naked Besides the running ice in the river, there
was a binding blizzard and it was so bitter cold
that the chief loss on the American side was 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 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
CbltvIous to the cold and dangers around them.
That was the grandest deed in the military STRAIT
agem which, rnada'Erederick 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 as a wealthy Virginia colonel, and his
nondescript 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
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 blundered." Many COM
mander would have shown up the improvtGent
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 eXcruciatng dilemma
he found himself in. He knew the awful secret
would spread if known to a 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 magazine on the island
Of Bermuda To get that required secret expe-
dition, much hazard and many weeks; but Wash
tngton's nerve was 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-inchief was entertaining
Hospitality at his headquarters, the Craige man.
sion, now best known as "Longfellows 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 coach-and-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 one expedition was gone to Bermuda
for powder, General Knox, with a small force,
succeeded In bringing a number Of cannon sew
eral hundred miles on OK sleds In midWnter
from Fort Ticonderoga. In those times that
tried mems souls" 1t was Washingtons iron
nerve, supported by his broad sense of humor,
sometimes seintiIlating with a radiance worthy
of Franklin or Lincoln, which saved the day.
This only one Of many occasions on which
Washington had to fight out the revolution alone,
A friend Of Lincons once said of him, "The
presidents laugh is his life-preseryer." This was
truer Of Washington than any one seems to have
realized in day when strict gravity without
levity, was expected of public characters. To
laugh or to see the humorous side of an incident
was considered the sign of frivolous DISPOSE
tion.
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 these pedan-
tic bographers related not what George Wash
ington really did, but what they imagined such
boy or man ought to have done under given con-
dtions. -
Washington would have laughed heartily at
Weems acknowledgements story If he had
ever heard (which he never did, for it was not
invented till later edition of the erring rectors
Juvenile history, six years after Washington's
death. Yet the real hero of the cherrytree fic-
ton would have found it the occasion of gravity
as well as mirth. In the stilted 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 to
have been would have done if he had cut down his
fathers favorite cherry tree.
If little George Washington had been the insult
ferabe little prig described by Mr. Weems, his
halfbrothers would not have loved him better
than their own brothers, or 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 as an ad-
venture story. Even in his quaint little diaries
he early diseloses 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 sur
Veying party to lay out the lands of his old friend
Lord Fairfax, In the wilderness of the Shenan-
AL T.. II