and support. Her means were narrow, for although Augustine
Washington was able to leave what was called a landed estate to each
son, it was little more than idle capital, and the income in ready
money was by no means so evident as the acres.

Many are the myths, and deplorably few the facts, that have come
down to us in regard to Washington's boyhood. For the former we are
indebted to the illustrious Weems, and to that personage a few more
words must be devoted. Weems has been held up to the present age
in various ways, usually, it must be confessed, of an unflattering
nature, and "mendacious" is the adjective most commonly applied to
him. There has been in reality a good deal of needless confusion about
Weems and his book, for he was not a complex character, and neither he
nor his writings are difficult to value or understand. By profession a
clergyman or preacher, by nature an adventurer, Weems loved notoriety,
money, and a wandering life. So he wrote books which he correctly
believed would be popular, and sold them not only through the regular
channels, but by peddling them himself as he traveled about the
country. In this way he gratified all his propensities, and no doubt
derived from life a good deal of simple pleasure. Chance brought him
near Washington in the closing days, and his commercial instinct
told him that here was the subject of all others for his pen and
his market. He accordingly produced the biography which had so much
success. Judged solely as literature, the book is beneath contempt.
The style is turgid, overloaded, and at times silly. The statements
are loose, the mode of narration confused and incoherent, and the
moralizing is flat and common-place to the last degree. Yet there
was a certain sincerity of feeling underneath all the bombast and
platitudes, and this saved the book. The biography did not go, and was
not intended to go, into the hands of the polite society of the great
eastern towns. It was meant for the farmers, the pioneers, and the
backwoodsmen of the country. It went into their homes, and passed with
them beyond the Alleghanies and out to the plains and valleys of the
great West. The very defects of the book helped it to success among
the simple, hard-working, hard-fighting race engaged in the conquest
of the American continent. To them its heavy and tawdry style, its
staring morals, and its real patriotism all seemed eminently befitting
the national hero, and thus Weems created