ss the page of a letter, is all that we can find.
The rest is silence. He did as great work as has fallen to the lot of
man, he wrote volumes of correspondence, he talked with innumerable
men and women, and of himself he said nothing. Here in this youthful
journal we have a narrative of wild adventure, wily diplomacy, and
personal peril, impossible of condensation, and yet not a word of the
writer's thoughts or feelings. All that was done or said important to
the business in hand was set down, and nothing was overlooked, but
that is all. The work was done, and we know how it was done, but the
man is silent as to all else. Here, indeed, is the man of action and
of real silence, a character to be much admired and wondered at in
these or any other days.

Washington's report looked like war, and its author was shortly
afterwards appointed lieutenant-colonel of a Virginian regiment,
Colonel Fry commanding. Now began that long experience of human
stupidity and inefficiency with which Washington was destined to
struggle through all the years of his military career, suffering from
them, and triumphing in spite of them to a degree unequaled by any
other great commander. Dinwiddie, the Scotch governor, was eager
enough to fight, and full of energy and good intentions, but he was
hasty and not overwise, and was filled with an excessive idea of his
prerogatives. The assembly, on its side, was sufficiently patriotic,
but its members came from a community which for more than half a
century had had no fighting, and they knew nothing of war or its
necessities. Unaccustomed to the large affairs into which they were
suddenly plunged, they displayed a narrow and provincial spirit.
Keenly alive to their own rights and privileges, they were more
occupied in quarreling with Dinwiddie than in prosecuting the war. In
the weak proprietary governments of Maryland and Pennsylvania there
was the same condition of affairs, with every evil exaggerated
tenfold. The fighting spirit was dominant in Virginia, but in
Quaker-ridden Pennsylvania it seems to have been almost extinct. These
three were not very promising communities to look to for support in a
difficult and costly war.

With all this inertia and stupidity Washington was called to cope, and
he rebelled against it in vigorous fashion. Leaving Colonel Fry to
follow with the main body of troops, Washington set out on April 2,
1754, with two companies from Alexandria, where he had been recruitin