epoch, and his surroundings, developed by circumstances into the
greatest character of all time--the first and most illustrious of
Americans.

Henry Cabot Lodge,[5] writing in 1899, was one of the first to discover
"the new Washington." "The real man," he wrote, "has been so overlaid
with myths and traditions, and so distorted by misleading criticisms,
that ... he has been wellnigh lost. We have the religious and statuesque
myth, we have the Weems myth (which turns Washington into a faultless
prig), and the ludicrous myth of the writer of paragraphs. We have the
stately hero of Sparks, and Everett, and Marshall, and Irving, with all
his great deeds as general and President duly recorded and set down in
polished and eloquent sentences; and we know him to be very great and
wise and pure, and, be it said with bated breath, very dry and cold....
In death as in life, there is something about Washington, call it
greatness, dignity, majesty, what you will, which seems to hold men
aloof and keep them from knowing him. In truth he was a difficult man to
know....

"Behind the popular myths, behind the statuesque figure of the orator
and the preacher, behind the general and the President of the historian,
there was a strong, vigorous man, in whose veins ran warm, red blood, in
whose heart were stormy passions and deep sympathy for humanity, in
whose brain were far-reaching thoughts, and who was informed throughout
his being with a resistless will."

It is a shameful thing that there should ever have been any doubt in
American minds of the true significance of Washington either as man or
soldier or statesman. But the writers of our day have decided that--if
they can help it--the sins of the fathers are not going to be visited
upon "the third and fourth generation." The call has gone out for modern
champions of our ancient champion; and literature has responded with a
will.

It takes long, however, to straighten out a national misconception. The
new literature has not yet had time to take hold of the popular
imagination. But when it does, and when we cease to regard the Father of
our Country as a demigod, and begin to love him as a man, then
Washington's Birthdays everywhere will lose their stiff, perfunctory,
bloodless character, and recover the inspiring, emotional quality of the
early celebrations.

R.H.S.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] In "The True History of the American Revolution" and "The Struggle
for American In