The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1917-02-27

ssMother! Mother!" shouted . little . boy, as he came running home Iron school one February day, teacher been telling us about a boy who hao an ax. and she called him .Abe!'V' few days more and this beginner 1T history ran in upon his mother Wltf q second enthusiastic report of hl' progress: II heard of another boy to-day. Teacher told us about him and he had hatchet, and his name was George!'
 Like motion pictures thrown upor a screen, the first lesson in character in industry, in truthfulness, in patriot ism, the first glimpse of the great un- heard of past had been flashed upoI that young mind, as upon the minds o1 generations of American children, 1T those simple, undergraduate pictures o1 Abraham Lincoln swinging an ax anc of the Famous encounter between the cherry tree and George Washington llittle hatchet. These are the signs ano symbols of America. almost as mucn as the stars and stripes.
 For millions and millions of llttie Americans that ax and that hatcne' have blazed the trail and chopped the way to an understanding, their first understanding of what our country means. They are worth far more than their weight in diamonds or m radiunl. They are priceless assets oi the republic.
 Parson weems' little hatchet is one of the most useful of all American in- ventions. If 1t were not, it would have been rust long ago.
 1t is | myth, protests old Dryasdust. So, sir, is the Equator. Sosare the Poles. So are the stars in the flag. So is Santa Claus. So are Aesop's Fa- bles. So, indeed, is the parable of the Prodigal Son and so are all the great parables by which Jesus spoke in pic lures.
 Some writers who scorn Parson Weems as a faker, accept and repeat another fake that has still less excuse for it's existence. While they so1onn- ly deny that Washington had little hatchet, they spread the harmful de- fusion that he was born with a gold spoon in his mouth. They rnisrepre- sent him as a little English aristocrat, who strangely happened to come into the world on the wrong side of the Att laItic Ocean. as a noble lord of high degree who graciously condescended to be the father of this lowborn co1n- try.
 Nothing else has done 50 much to cut off Washington from the hearts and sympathies of his countrymen as the mistaken idea that he was of 9 class apart, . pampered child of for tune, naughty scion of a first fan- fly of virginia--an F. F. V.
 The little hatchet tells us the truth. The gold spoon tells us an untruth. George Washing gton was not a gentle man. He was man. <
 Perhaps three-fourths of our Presf- dents were born in more pretentious homes than the modest birthplace of the Father of his country. with it's three or four rooms and an attic. Few of his successors received so little schooling and in the first 40 years of our National history he was the only President without a college education.
 The washihgtons were a plain but always respected family, living on the outskirts of the aristocratic Virginia,
 
 side of the James River. So far from boasting of his ancestry, the only famous Washington lived and died without knowing who his English for bears were or where they lived in the old country. Perhaps the descen- dants of most of the immigrants who landed from the ssteerage in the 18th century can trace their lineage far ther back.
 For the Washingtons had been in America only 75 years when George was born, his great-4randfather hav- ing come out in the simple capacity of a mate on an English trading ship. His grandfather is lost in the obscur- ity of the Virginia wilds, and his fath- CT apparently did not prosper over much as father, since he was also from time to time the skipper of a vessel.
 The farm that we know as Mt. Yer non first came into the family as a re- ward. for one of it's members who fer ried oyer from English jails and aims houses 100 indentured servants-those ''puor white serfs that the Virginia aristocrats used to yoke up with the black slaves to do the hard work of the colony.
 By the accident of birth George Washington was not first even in this modest family. As the child of a sec- opd wife and the fourth son born to his father, he was outranked at the start. By the statutes of colonial Vir- ginia as by the statutes of England, the first born boy received every ad- vantage that could be conferred on him in the race of life and his broth CTS were cruelty handicapped.
 But nature stands for the square deal and delights to mock the man. made laws of heredity. Generally ad- vantages only turn to handicaps and to advantages Throughout English history, the elder son. loaded down with titles and estates that he did not win, has been distanced by. the younger son, who had to make his own way along the cinderpath of ambition. Washingtons and the family would
 Subtract the younger son of the not have a line in history. Among it's six boys. he was the only one of them all to make name that was heard 50 miles away.
 His elder brothers, Lawrence and were sent to school in Eng 1ands but he was left to pick up such crumbs of education as were dropped by an occasional teacher who wan dered into the neighborhood. At the death, of the fainter, Lawrence inner ited the Mt. Vernon farm and Angus tine another farm called Wakefield.
 The widow herself was left with Iit-