his letter, recently printed, is in the collection of
Dr. Toner, at Washington. It contains some obvious errors, as
in regard to the color of the eyes, but it is nevertheless very
interesting and valuable.]

This description is certainly not a flattering one, and all other
accounts as well as the best portraits prove that Washington was a
much handsomer man than this letter would indicate. Yet the writer,
despite his freedom from all illusions and his readiness to state
frankly all defects, was profoundly impressed by Washington's
appearance as he watched him meditating by the camp-fire at the crisis
of the country's fate, and herein lies the principal interest of his
description.

This personal impressiveness, however, affected every one upon all
occasions.

Mr. Rush, for instance, saw Washington go on one occasion to open
Congress. He drove to the hall in a handsome carriage of his own,
with his servants dressed in white liveries. When he had alighted
he stopped on the step, and pausing faced round to wait for his
secretary. The vast crowd looked at him in dead silence, and then,
when he turned away, broke into wild cheering. At his second
inauguration he was dressed in deep mourning for the death of his
nephew. He took the oath of office in the Senate Chamber, and Major
Forman, who was present, wrote in his diary: "Every eye was on him.
When he said, 'I, George Washington,' my blood seemed to run cold and
every one seemed to start." At the inauguration of Adams, another
eye-witness wrote that Washington, dressed in black velvet, with a
military hat and black cockade, was the central figure in the scene,
and when he left the chamber the crowds followed him, cheering and
shouting to the door of his own house.

There must have been something very impressive about a man who, with
no pretensions to the art of the orator and with no touch of the
charlatan, could so move and affect vast bodies of men by his presence
alone. But the people, with the keen eye of affection, looked beyond
the mere outward nobility of form. They saw the soldier who had given
them victory, the great statesman who had led them out of confusion
and faction to order and good government. Party newspapers might rave,
but the instinct of the people was never at fault. They loved, trusted
and well-nigh worshiped Washington living, and they have honored and
reverenced him with an unchanging fidelity since his death, nearly a
century ago.

But litt