r to anything but their feelings towards him."

[Illustration: PRESIDENTIAL MANSION, PHILADELPHIA]

It is not to be supposed from this that Washington was above considering
the popular bent, or was lacking in political astuteness. John Adams
asserted that "General Washington, one of the most attentive men in the
world to the manner of doing things, owed a great proportion of his
celebrity to this circumstance," and frequently he is to be found
considering the popularity or expediency of courses. In 1776 he said, "I
have found it of importance and highly expedient to yield to many points
in fact, without seeming to have done it, and this to avoid bringing on a
too frequent discussion of matters which in a political view ought to be
kept a little behind the curtain, and not to be made too much the subjects
of disquisition. Time only can eradicate and overcome customs and
prejudices of long standing--they must be got the better of by slow and
gradual advances."

Elsewhere he wrote, "In a word, if a man cannot act in all respects as he
would wish, he must do what appears best, under the circumstances he is
in. This I aim at, however short I may fall of the end;" of a certain
measure he thought, "it has, however, like many other things in which I
have been involved, two edges, neither of which can be avoided without
falling on the other;" and that even in small things he tried to be
politic is shown in his journey through New England, when he accepted an
invitation to a large public dinner at Portsmouth, and the next day, being
at Exeter, he wrote in his diary, "a jealousy subsists between this town
(where the Legislature alternately sits) and Portsmouth; which, had I
known it in time, would have made it necessary to have accepted an
invitation to a public dinner, but my arrangements having been otherwise
made, I could not."

Nor was Washington entirely lacking in finesse. He offered Patrick Henry a
position after having first ascertained in a roundabout manner that it
would be refused, and in many other ways showed that he understood good
politics. Perhaps the neatest of his dodges was made when the French
revolutionist Volney asked him for a general letter of introduction to the
American people. This was not, for political and personal reasons, a thing
Washington cared to give, yet he did not choose to refuse, so he wrote on
a sheet of paper,--

"C. Volney
needs no recommendation from