Fulton County tribune. (Wauseon, Ohio) 1883-1925, 1914-02-20

direction. But painter could
lA-rh,J delneate the herosm of the actual
scene. His 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 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 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 ms Ike them
forget their terrible situation; 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 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 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 we're amply supplied
with ammunition and might sally forth any hour
against the American "irregulars."
Some one had blundered." Many a
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 excrucating 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
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
ingtons 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-in-chief was entertaining
Hospitality at his headquarters, the Craige
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 oachand-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 generassimo.
While one expedition was gone to Bermuda
for powder. General Knox, with small force,
succeeded in bringing a number Of cannon sew
eral hundred miles on OK seds in midwinter
from Fort Ticonderoga. In those times that
tried mems souls" it was Washington's iron
nerve. supported by his broad sense of humor,
SOmeLlmes 5clnIlliallnS Win a Taulanc6 worthy
OF Franklin Lincoln, which saved the day
This was only of many occasions on which
Washington had to fight out the revolution alone.
friend Of Lincoln's once said of him, THE
presidents laugh is his lfe-preserver." This was
truer of Washington than any one seems to have
realized in a day when strict gravity without
levity. expected of public characters. To
laugh or to see the humorous side of an incident
was considered the sign of frivolous disposL
ton.
Washingtons 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 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 man ought to have done under given con-
ditions
Washington would have laughed heartily at
Weems' hatchet-and-cherry-tree 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 Washingtons
death Yet the real hero of the cherry-tree fic-
tion would have found it the occasion of gravity
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 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.
II little George Washington had been the insult
ferable little prig described by Mr.. Weems, his
halfbrothers would not have loved him better
than their 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 an 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 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-
doah. Here is one of his own experiences as
"tenderfoot," recorded Tuesday. March 15.
1747S:
I'VE got our Suppers & was lighted into
Room, and l. not being SO good Woodsman as
ye rest of my company, stripped myself very Or
derly, G went into ye Bed. as they called it.,
when to my surprise found it 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 Lice. Fleas.
&C.
II was glad to get up (as soon as ye light was
carried from us) put on my Clothes and lay as
So1o~seo.o-~-o~~>0>~ 0>~~.>o>~>~-oooo.o>~~oo