point to fall in with him when I hear he is out on
horseback--his seat is so firm, his management so easy and graceful,
that I, who am an instructor in horsemanship, would go to him and learn
to ride."

In his later day, the General, desirous of riding pleasantly, procured
from the North two horses of a breed for bearing the saddle. They were
well to look at, and pleasantly gaited under the saddle, but also scary,
and therefore unfitted for the service of one who liked to ride quietly
on his farm, occasionally dismounting and walking in his fields to
inspect improvements. From one of these horses the General sustained a
fall--probably the only fall he ever had from a horse in his life. It
was upon a November evening, and he was returning from Alexandria to
Mount Vernon, with three friends and a groom. Having halted a few
moments, he dismounted, and upon rising in his stirrup again, the horse,
alarmed at the glare from a fire near the roadside, sprang from under
his rider, who came heavily to the ground. His friends rushed to give
him assistance, thinking him hurt. But the vigorous old man was upon his
feet again, brushing the dust from his clothes, and after thanking those
who came to his aid, said that he had had a very complete tumble, and
that it was owing to a cause no horseman could well avoid or
control--that he was only poised in his stirrup, and had not yet gained
his saddle when the scary animal sprang from under him.

Bred in the vigorous school of frontier warfare, "the earth for his
bed, his canopy the heavens," Washington excelled the hunter and
woodsman in their athletic habits, and in those trials of manhood which
filled the hardy days of his early life. He was amazingly swift of foot,
and could climb steep mountains seemingly without effort. Indeed, in all
the tests of his great physical powers he appeared to make little
effort. When he overthrew the strong man of Virginia in wrestling, upon
a day when many of the finest athletes were engaged in the contest, he
had retired to the shade of a tree intent upon the reading of a book. It
was only after the champion of the games strode through the ring calling
for nobler antagonists, and taunting the reader with the fear that he
would be thrown, that Washington closed his book. Without taking off his
coat he calmly observed that fear did not enter his make-up; then
grappling with the champion, he hurled him to the ground. "In
Washington's lion-like grasp," s