[Illustration: Washington at Mount Vernon]
While President, Washington used to give a public dinner, every Thursday at four o'clock, "to as many as my table will hold." He allowed five minutes for difference in watches, and, at exactly five minutes past four by his hall clock, went to the table. His only apology to the laggard guest was, "I have a cook who never asks whether the company has come, but whether the hour has come."
If we may judge from the very full accounts of these grand dinners, as described in the diaries of the { 76} guests, they must have been stiff affairs. These people probably wrote the truth when they said, "glad it is over," "great formality," "my duty to submit to it," "scarcely a word was said," "there was a dead silence." No doubt there was much good food to eat and choice wine to drink, but the formal manners of the times were emphasized by awe of their grave host. Very few of the guests, both at Mount Vernon and at Philadelphia, failed to allude to the habit that Washington had of playing with his fork and striking on the table with it.
It would take a book many times larger than this to tell you all that has been written about Washington's everyday life. Some day you will delight to read more about him, and learn why he was, in every sense of the word, a wise, a good, and a great man,--the man who "without a beacon, without a chart, but with an unswerving eye and steady hand, guided his country safe through darkness and through storm."
Every young American should remember of Washington that "there is no word spoken, no line written, no deed done by him, which justice would reverse or wisdom deplore." His greatness did not consist so much in his intellect, his skill, and his genius, though he possessed all these, as in his honor, his integrity, his truthfulness, his high and controlling sense of duty--in a word, his _character_, honest, pure, noble, great.
We have certainly read enough about General Washington to know that he often planned to steal a march on the British. Don't you remember how surprised General Howe was one morning to find that Washington had gone to Dorchester Heights, with a big force of men, horses, and carts, and how he threw up breastworks, mounted cannon, and forced the British general after a few days to quit the good city of Boston? Haven't we also read how the "ragged Continentals" left their bloody footprints in the snow, as they marched to Trenton all that bitter cold night in December, 1777, and gave the Hessians a Christmas greeting they little expected?