he hard-worked jesters of the daily newspapers take it
up and make a little fun out of it, sufficient for the day that is
passing over them. The opportunity is tempting, because of the ease
with which fun can be made when that fundamental source of humor, a
violent contrast, can be employed. But there is no irreverence in it
all, for the jest is not aimed at the real Washington, but at the
Washington portrayed in the Weems biography. The worthy "rector of
Mount Vernon," as he called himself, meant no harm, and there is a
good deal of truth, no doubt, in his book. But the blameless and
priggish boy, and the equally faultless and uninteresting man, whom he
originated, have become in the process of development a myth. So in
its further development is the Washington of the humorist a myth.
Both alike are utterly and crudely false. They resemble their great
original as much as Greenough's classically nude statue, exposed to
the incongruities of the North American climate, resembles in dress
and appearance the general of our armies and the first President of
the United States.

Such are the myth-makers. They are widely different from the critics
who have assailed Washington in a sidelong way, and who can be better
dealt with in a later chapter. These last bring charges which can be
met; the myth-maker presents a vague conception, extremely difficult
to handle because it is so elusive.

One of our well-known historical scholars and most learned
antiquarians, not long ago, in an essay vindicating the "traditional
Washington," treated with scorn the idea of a "new Washington" being
discovered. In one sense this is quite right, in another totally
wrong. There can be no new Washington discovered, because there never
was but one. But the real man has been so overlaid with myths and
traditions, and so distorted by misleading criticisms, that, as
has already been suggested, he has been wellnigh lost. We have
the religious or statuesque myth, we have the Weems myth, 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. We are
also familiar with the common-place man who so wonderfully illustrated
the power of character as set forth by various pers