Evening star., 1922-02-22
Rate by Mail-Payable in Advance.
MARYLAND and Virginia.
George Washington.

to all Americans, but the connection
between George Washington and
Washington city is closer than that
between George Washington and any
other part Of the United States. 1t is
not that the city Of Washington is the
capital of the country of which George
Washington was principal founder.
There are other reasons.
The site of the city was suggested
and chosen by Washington because he
believed it the best site in the United
States, and because he was acquainted
with this section and had been ac-
quainted with it since his boyhood. He
had crossed and recrossed the fields
that became the seat of government.
He had dreamed that the Potomac
river would be a chief link in a water
way with an Allegheny portage. be-
tween the great lakes, the northwest
territory and the Atlantic. He be-
lieved that at Great Falls an indus
trial city would grow up because of
the water power there. He was the
author. promoter and president and a
principal stockholder in the Potomac
Improvement Company, chartered by
Maryland and Virginia in 1884 to- make
the Potomac navisable from the ALE.
ghany mountains to tidewater.
Washington was born on the Nir-
ginia shore Of the Potomac about
seventy miles below this city. When a
little boy he removed with his parents
to a farm on the north bank of the
Rappahannock opposite Fredericks-
burg. about sixty miles from Wash
ington. While in his teens he removed
to his half-brother's home, Mount
Vernon. about fifteen miles from the
city Of his name. He inherited Mount
Vernon. il was his home till death,
and his mortal remains rest there.
There was a proposition that his re-
mains should lie for all time in Wash
ington city in crypt beneath the
Capitol dome. but the plan failed.
He was a leading man in our neigh
bor city of Alexandria. he had many
acquaintances and friends in George
town, which became a part of Wash
ington. and he visited at the homes Of
many Of the country people in what
we now speak of as 'the Washington
neighborhood.' He was we'll acquaint-
ed In a number of the little old towns
that are still around us, as Bladens-
burg. Piscataway, Marlborough. Port
Tobacco. Dumfries. Falmouth, Rock
willie and Leesburs.
Scenes and places with Washington
associations are all around us. There
are scores OF houses and several
churches. Pohick. Christ Broad Creek
Yeocomicc and others, which sheltered
him and are still standing, and the
blood and collateral kindred of Wash
ington in this part of the country are
numerous. Abingdon. the birthhouse
Of Nellie Custis and George Washing
ton Parke Gusts. is standing in the
brickyard region across the Highway
bridge. and Woodlawn. the home
which Washington gave to Nellie and
her husband. Lawrence Lewis. Is
standing southwest of Mount Vernon.
A road leads from Washington city to
Yorktown, and many of our people
travel it. And that road passes close
to the farm on the Rappahannock
where George as little boy on very
credible testimony hacked a cherry
tree-a likely thing for a little boy to
do-and where as a big boy he threw
stones across the river. not a gigantic
task for a good pitcher. At F'redericks-
burg his mother lived and died, and at
her grave is a monument tardily built
by Americans after the grave had been
neglected for nearly a century.
All historians seem to write of
George Washington as the foremost
American. and that estimate is per-
haps as nearly just as human esti-
mates can be. Washington was not as
reat a soldier as some other men
have been; he was not as eminent as
statesman as some other men; he was
not famous as a philosopher: he was
not an orator at all; he did not shine
as a writer. and he was not an edu-
schooling had been simple and elemen-
tary. But in every department Of ac-
ton into which Washington entered
ne was a success, and he was volun-
tarily accepted as a leader by men
who came to be associated with him.
Fair-minded men in his time never
questioned that he was an honest man,
that he was a patriotic man. that he
was a wise man, or that he was
man Of ability and of physical and
moral courage. He must really have
been great man.
AS time goes on. and men write and
speak Of Washington, the impression
oeepens in the minds of many that
Washington was a man somewhat re-
sembling a classic statue in marble or
one of the stiff and unhumanlike
bronzes one sees in the parks. Wash
ington was not. however, a cold, dis
passionate. austere man. He was in
tensely human in his passions and his
appetites and ways Of thinking. One
reason why men accepted and liked
his leadership was because Of his red
blooded and robust humanity.
Senators who rode over some bar
dcularly rough thoroughfares are ex-
pressing q welcome interest in the