inistration, but he could write nothing more
entertaining than a state paper or a military report. He gave himself
up to great affairs, he was hardly human, and he shunned the graces,
the wit, and all the salt of life, and passed them by on the other
side.

That Washington was serious and earnest cannot be doubted, for no man
could have done what he did and been otherwise. He had little time
for the lighter sides of life, and he never exerted himself to say
brilliant and striking things. He was not a maker of phrases and
proclamations, and the quality of the charlatan, so often found in men
of the highest genius, was utterly lacking in him. He never talked or
acted with an eye to dramatic effect, and this is one reason for the
notion that he was dull and dry; for the world dearly loves a little
charlatanism, and is never happier than in being brilliantly duped.
But was he therefore really dull and juiceless, unlovable and
unloving? Responsibility came upon him when a boy, and he was hardly
of age when he was carrying in his hands the defense of his colony and
the heavy burden of other human lives. Experience like this makes a
man who is good for anything sober; but sobriety is not dullness, and
if we look a little below the surface we find the ready refutation of
such an idea. In his letters and even in the silent diaries we detect
the keenest observation. He looked at the country, as he traveled,
with the eye of the soldier and the farmer, and mastered its features
and read its meaning with rapid and certain glance. It was not to him
a mere panorama of fields and woods, of rivers and mountains. He
saw the beauties of nature and the opportunities of the farmer, the
trader, or the manufacturer wherever his gaze rested. He gathered
in the same way the statistics of the people and of their various
industries. In the West Indies, on the Virginian frontier, in his
journeys when he was President, he read the story of all he saw as he
would have read a book, and brought it home with him for use.

[Illustration: NATHANAEL GREENE]

In the same way he read and understood men, and had that power of
choosing among them which is essential in its highest form to the
great soldier or statesman. His selection never erred unless in a rare
instance like that of Monroe, forced on him by political exigencies,
or when the man of his choice would not serve. Congress chose Gates
for the southern campaign, but Washington selected Greene, in