The Madison journal. (Tallulah, Madison Parish, La.) 1888-current, 1914-02-14


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
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 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
discovered that there were but few rounds or
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 had blundered." Many 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 IL 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
tty 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
ington's nerve was equal to the fearful strain.
During that long, tense interval the American
troops were working away upon the Notifications,
preparing for grand attack. Meanwhile the
young commander-n-chief entertaining
Hospitality at his headquarters, the Craige
sion now best known as "Longfellow's Home" in
Cambridge. AS a pleasant diversion. Lady
Washington then of the wealthiest women in
America, came to visit the general, and all the
countryside 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 one expedition gone to Bermuda
for powder, General Knox, with a small force.
succeeded in bringing number Of cannon sew
eral hundred miles on OK seds in midwinter
from Fort Ticonderoga. In those times that
tried mems souls 1t Washingtons iron
nerve, supported by his broad sense OF humor,
sometimes scintatng with radiance worthy
of Franklin or Lincoln, which saved the day.
This was only one of many occasions on which
Washington had to fight out the revolution alone.
A friend OF Lincolns once 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
laugh or to see the humorous side Of an incident
was considered the sign of a frivolous DISPOSE
ton.
Washington's early biographeTs 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 vulgar!" In strainng to make their
hero appear to have been a demigod, those pedan
tic biographers related not what George Wash
ington really did. but what they imagined such a
boy or man ought to have done under given con-
ditions.
Washington would have laughed heartily at
Weems' hatchet-and cherry-tree story II he had
ever heard it-which he never did, for it was not
invented till later edition Of the erring rectors
juvenile history. six years after Washngton's
death Yet the real hero of the cherry-tree fc-
ton would have found 1t the occasion Of gravity
well mirth In the stilted story Of Little
George and His Pa Weems 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 II he had cut down his
fathers favorite cherry tree
II little George Washington had been the insult
| ferable little prig described by Mr. Weems. his
| half-brothers 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 ad-
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 a lad Of sixteen he led a sur.
veying party to lay out the lands Of his old friend
Lord Fairfax. in the wilderness OF the Shenan.
doah. Here is one Of his own experiences as a
"tenderfoot." recorded Tuesday. March Is.
| 1747-8:
I'VE got our Suppers & was lighted into a
Room. and l. not being good a Woodsman as
We rest Of my company. stripped myself very or.
Derby went into We Bed. as they called It,
when to my surprise found 1t to be nothing but
a little straw-matted together without sheets or
anything else but one threadbare blanket with
double its weight of Vermin such as Lice Fleas,
&C.
| Il was glad to get up las soon as We light was
carried from us) put on my Clothes and lay as
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