, with a strong, handsome face. He
was remarkably muscular and powerful. As a boy he was a leader in all
outdoor sports. No one could fling the bar further than he, and no one
could ride more difficult horses. As a young man he became a woodsman
and hunter. Day after day he could tramp through the wilderness with his
gun and his surveyor's chain, and then sleep at night beneath the stars.
He feared no exposure or fatigue, and outdid the hardiest backwoodsman
in following a winter trail and swimming icy streams. This habit of
vigorous bodily exercise he carried through life. Whenever he was at
Mount Vernon he gave a large part of his time to fox-hunting, riding
after his hounds through the most difficult country. His physical power
and endurance counted for much in his success when he commanded his
army, and when the heavy anxieties of general and president weighed upon
his mind and heart.

He was an educated, but not a learned man. He read well and remembered
what he read, but his life was, from the beginning, a life of action,
and the world of men was his school. He was not a military genius like
Hannibal, or Caesar, or Napoleon, of which the world has had only three
or four examples. But he was a great soldier of the type which the
English race has produced, like Marlborough and Cromwell, Wellington,
Grant, and Lee. He was patient under defeat, capable of large
combinations, a stubborn and often reckless fighter, a winner of
battles, but much more, a conclusive winner in a long war of varying
fortunes. He was, in addition, what very few great soldiers or
commanders have ever been, a great constitutional statesman, able to
lead a people along the paths of free government without undertaking
himself to play the part of the strong man, the usurper, or the savior
of society.

He was a very silent man. Of no man of equal importance in the world's
history have we so few sayings of a personal kind. He was ready enough
to talk or to write about the public duties which he had in hand, but he
hardly ever talked of himself. Yet there can be no greater error than
to suppose Washington cold and unfeeling, because of his silence and
reserve. He was by nature a man of strong desires and stormy passions.
Now and again he would break out, even as late as the presidency, into
a gust of anger that would sweep everything before it. He was always
reckless of personal danger, and had a fierce fighting spirit which
nothing could check whe