ons, either from
love of novelty or because the great chief seemed to get in the way of
their own heroes.

If this is all, then the career of Washington and his towering fame
present a problem of which the world has never seen the like. But this
cannot be all: there must be more behind. Every one knows the famous
Stuart portrait of Washington. The last effort of the artist's cunning
is there employed to paint his great subject for posterity. How serene
and beautiful it is! It is a noble picture for future ages to look
upon. Still it is not all. There is in the dining-room of Memorial
Hall at Cambridge another portrait, painted by Savage. It is cold and
dry, hard enough to serve for the signboard of an inn, and able, one
would think, to withstand all weathers. Yet this picture has something
which Stuart left out. There is a rugged strength in the face which
gives us pause, there is a massiveness in the jaw, telling of an iron
grip and a relentless will, which has infinite meaning.

"Here's John the Smith's rough-hammered head. Great eye,
Gross jaw, and griped lips do what granite can
To give you the crown-grasper. What a man!"

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 most difficult
man to know. Carlyle, crying out through hundreds of pages and myriads
of words for the "silent man," passed by with a sneer the most
absolutely silent great man that history can show. Washington's
letters and speeches and messages fill many volumes, but they are all
on business. They are profoundly silent as to the writer himself. From
this Carlyle concluded apparently that there was nothing to tell,--a
very shallow conclusion if it was the one he really reached. Such an
idea was certainly far, very far, from the truth.

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. The veil of his
silence is not often lifted, and never intentionally, but now and then
there is a glimpse behind it; and in stray sentences and in little
incidents strenuously gathered