Lear. More than once he threw his hands up as he hurled
imprecations upon St. Clair. Mr. Lear remained speechless; awed into
breathless silence.

The roused Chief sat down on the sofa once more. He seemed conscious of
his passion, and uncomfortable. He was silent. His warmth beginning to
subside, he at length said in an altered voice: "_This must not go
beyond this room_." Another pause followed--a longer one--when he said
in a tone quite low, "_General St. Clair shall have justice; I looked
hastily through the dispatches, saw the whole disaster but not all the
particulars; I will receive him without displeasure; I will hear him
without prejudice; he shall have full justice_."

He was now, said Mr. Lear, perfectly calm. Half an hour had gone by. The
storm was over; and no sign of it was afterwards seen in his conduct or
heard in his conversation. The result is known. The whole case was
investigated by Congress. St. Clair was exculpated and regained the
confidence Washington had in him when appointing him to that command. He
had put himself into the thickest of the fight and escaped unhurt,
though so ill as to be carried on a litter, and unable to mount his
horse without help.

A passage from one of Mr. Jefferson's letters which the historian Sparks
records, may here be given, as its spirit covers the private as well as
public life of Washington. Mr. Jefferson withdrew his services as
Secretary of State from the administration of Washington towards the
close of his first term in the Presidency. His retirement from that
post took place when party spirit was violent and bitter in the extreme;
never was it more so in the annals of our country; and it was known that
he had differed from Washington on political questions of the greatest
importance. Nevertheless, writing of him at a later period Mr. Jefferson
says: "His integrity was most pure; his justice the most inflexible I
have ever known; no motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship
or hatred, being able to bias his decision. He was, indeed, in every
sense of the word, a wise, a good, and a great man."

I return to his letters to Mr. Lear. In superintending his domestic
affairs, these letters exhibit him as the head of a well-ordered family,
himself the regulator of it all under maxims that best conduce to order
because not too rigid. We see that he was truly hospitable; kind;
devoted to his kindred whom he gathers around him, interesting himself
in their e