to raise a
regiment of a thousand men, pay all their expenses, and lead them to
Boston to drive out the King's soldiers.

The three men, therefore, must have talked long and earnestly as they
rode to Philadelphia; for the Congress which they were to attend was the
first one to which all the colonies were invited to send delegates. It
was to consider the cause of the whole people, and Virginia was to see
in Massachusetts not a rival colony, but one with which she had common
cause. The last time Washington had gone over the road he had been on an
errand to the King's chief representative in America, the
Commander-in-Chief, Governor Shirley, and one matter which he had held
very much at heart had been his own commission as an officer in His
Majesty's army. He was on a different errand now. Still, like the men
who were most in earnest at that time, he was thinking how the colonies
could secure their rights as colonies, not how they might break away
from England and set up for themselves.

[Footnote D: The above illustration is reproduced from Irving's "Life of
Washington," by kind permission of Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons.]

They were five days on the road, and on September the 4th, they
breakfasted near Newcastle, in Delaware, dined at Chester, in
Pennsylvania, and in the evening were in Philadelphia, at the City
Tavern, which stood on Second street, above Walnut street, and was the
meeting-place of most of the delegates. Washington, however, though he
was often at the City Tavern, had his lodging at Dr. Shippen's. The
Congress met the next day at Carpenters' Hall, and was in session for
seven weeks. The first two or three days were especially exciting to the
members. There they were, fifty-one men, from all the colonies save
Georgia, met to consult together--Englishmen who sang "God save the
King," but asked also what right the King had to act as he had done
toward Boston. They did not know one another well at the beginning.
There was no man among them who could be called famous beyond his own
colony, unless it was George Washington. Up to this time the different
colonies had lived so apart from one another, each concerned about its
own affairs, that there had been little opportunity for a man to be
widely known.

[Illustration: CARPENTERS' HALL, PHILADELPHIA, WHERE THE FIRST
CONTINENTAL CONGRESS ASSEMBLED.]

So, as they looked at one another at the City Tavern, or at the
Carpenters' Hall when they met, each man wa