The border vidette., 1931-09-05
ENJOYED JOKES

birth Of George Washington,
seems due to receive
still another service from its
greatest man. The year of com
has turned the
thoughts of every American to
the historic days when Washing
ton lived. Tnis new history les,
son has given Us all a sense Of
our heroic beginnings. l. has
turned our attention to George
Washington as never before and
has permitted vast new out
pouring of the facts concerning
every phase of his character and
bis career.
The consequence is that we
now see George Washington,n not
as the cold and serious figure we
had imagined him from sketchy
history lessons in school, but as
the warm. emotional, kindly, and
even humor-ioving human being
that be really was.
10 our change from the earlier
view, we have come to realize
that George Washington loved
laughter and had a sense Of
humor, in that he wrote many a
letter in a silly humorous vein,
and that while be may have been
no great hand at cracking joke,
be could laugh heartily at the
jokes and pranks of others.
James Madison. who saw much
of Washington on intimate per
sonal terms, has written, The
story of bis never laughing is
wholly untrue; no man seemed
more to enjoy gay conversation.
He was particularly pleased with
the jokes, good humor, and hi
larity of his companions" Madi
son further told Jared Sparks,
president of Harvard College,
when the scholar was writing a
life of Washington, that though
Washington was not fluent nor
ready in conversation, and was
inclined to be tactiturn ia general
society,"" yet in the company of
two or three intimate friends, be
was talkative, and when little
excited was sometimes fluent and
even eloquent"
While Washington was Presi
dent, Bishop White of Pennsyl.
vania was a guest at dinner with
the Washingtons in Philadel
phia. and records that much
hilarity prevailed" This of a
Presidential dinner during the
administration of George Wash
ington
Nelly Curtis, has left as testi
mony to Washington's mlrthful
ness, Il have sometimes made
him laugh most heartily from
sympathy with my joyous and
extravagant spirits.
AS for George Washington
himself, he was capa BILE of pro
voking a smile in readers of his
letters. Paul Leicester Ford. in
his True George Washiugton,"
quotes several of Farmer Wash
lngton's letters to friends in
which be has high old time in
commenting on the peculiar
cussedness of jackass sent him
by the King of Spain. Even in
his otherwise very business like
Diaries, Washington here and
there drops a line of dry humor,
as when, in speaking of certain
lazy workman, be records.
"Stephens hard at work with an
ax-very extraordinary this"
That be could be quite playful
and sportive be proved in more
than oae of his letters to the
Mare uis de lafayette. but dur
ing the Revolution these occas
ional bursts of humor we're apt
to take a grim turn. as when be
wroie of affairs at Morristown in
1777, The men with me are too
few to fight and not enough to
run away with" Commenting
on the wholesale desertions at
Morristo wn, Washington exclaim
ed, I'VE shall soon be Obliged
to detach one half Of the army
to bring back the other"
One of General Washington's
most graceful bits of humor
crops out in a letter he wrote in
1879, inviting several ladies to
dine at bis table. To prepare
them for the Spartan fare they
might have to face, be wrote:
Since our arrival at this hap
py spot, we have had ham,
(sometimes a shoulder) of bacon,
to grace the head of the table;
a piece of roast beef adorns the
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