Western Kansas world. [volume] (WaKeeney, Kan.) 1885-current, 1914-02-28


naked. Besides the running ice in the river, there
was binding blizzard, and it was so bitter cold
that the chief loss 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 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
facetious story, which, coming from him, star
tied them, set their blood tingling 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 knows the outside of the
story of the siege of Boston by the
mander-n-chief who had come the continental
congress a wealthy Virginia colonel, and ,his
nondescript crowd of recruits, wholly unused
not only to military discipline, but 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 blundered'' Many
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 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 a magazine on the island
of Bermuda To get that required a 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-inchief entertaining
Hospitality at his headquarters, the Craige man
sion, now best known as 'Longfellows Home in
Cambridge AS a pleasant diversion, Lady"
Washington, then of the wealthiest in
America, came to visit the general, and all the
countryside 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 generalssimo-
While expedition gone to Bermuda
Cor powder, General Knox. with small force.
succeeded in bringing a number of
eral hundred miles on OK sleds in midwinter
from Fort Ticonderoga- In those times that
tried mems souls it Washingtons iron
nerve supported by his broad of humor,
sometimes scntillating with a radiance worthy
of Franklin Lincoln, which saved the day.
This only of many occasions which
Washington had to fight the revolution alone.
friend OF Lincoln's said of him, The
presidents laugh is his lfe-preserver This was
truer of Washington than any to have
realized in day when strict gravity without
levity, expected of public characters. To
laugh to the humorous side of incident
was considered the sign of a frivolous DISPOSE
ton.
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 strainng 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 ought to have done under given
| ditions
Washington would have laughed heartily at
Weems' Observation-Disclosures story If he had
ever heard (which he did it was
invented till later edition of the erring
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
well mirth. In the stilted story of Little
out the idea of his time; tell what the small
boy actually did, but what the consummate little
prig he conceived little George Washing ton to
| have been would have done il he had cut down his
fathers fayorite cherry tree
II little George Washington had been the insult
ferable little prig described by Mr. Weems his
| half brothers would have loved him better
than their own brothers, their 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 ad-
venture story Even in his quaint little diaries
he early discloses a lively sense humor-sav-
age humor sometimes. but broad and boyish. He
showed this by telling only the jokes against him
self When he lad OF sixteen he led sur
veying party to lay the lands of his old friend
doah- Here is Of his experiences as a
| --tenderfoot," recorded Tuesday, March Is.
| 1747-S:
| We got our Suppers & was lighted into a
Room and l. not being so good a Woodsman as
We rest of my company. stripped myself very or
L.