When he did so he would use strong and even violent language,
as he did at Kip's Landing and at Monmouth. Well-intentioned persons
in their desire to make him a faultless being have argued at great
length that Washington never swore, and but for their argument the
matter would never have attracted much attention. He was anything but
a profane man, but the evidence is beyond question that if deeply
angered he would use a hearty English oath; and not seldom the action
accompanied the word, as when he rode among the fleeing soldiers at
Kip's Landing, striking them with his sword, and almost beside himself
at their cowardice. Judge Marshall used to tell also of an occasion
when Washington sent out an officer to cross a river and bring back
some information about the enemy, on which the action of the morrow
would depend. The officer was gone some time, came back, and found
the general impatiently pacing his tent. On being asked what he had
learned, he replied that the night was dark and stormy, the river full
of ice, and that he had not been able to cross. Washington glared at
him a moment, seized a large leaden inkstand from the table, hurled it
at the offender's head, and said with a fierce oath, "Be off, and send
me a _man_!" The officer went, crossed the river, and brought back the
information.

But although he would now and then give way to these tremendous bursts
of anger, Washington was never unjust. As he said to one officer, "I
never judge the propriety of actions by after events;" and in that
sound philosophy is found the secret not only of much of his own
success, but of the devotion of his officers and men. He might be
angry with them, but he was never unfair. In truth, he was too
generous to be unjust or even over-severe to any one, and there is not
a line in all his writings which even suggests that he ever envied any
man. So long as the work in hand was done, he cared not who had the
glory, and he was perfectly magnanimous and perfectly at ease about
his own reputation. He never showed the slightest anxiety to write his
own memoirs, and he was not in the least alarmed when it was proposed
to publish the memoirs of other people, like General Charles Lee,
which would probably reflect upon him.

He had the same confidence in the judgment of posterity that he had in
the future beyond the grave. He regarded death with entire calmness
and even indifference not only when it came to him, but when in
previous years