rymen, promise to co-operate in establishing
those four great and essential pillars of public felicity."

[Illustration: The Room in Which the First Constitutional Convention
Met in Philadelphia

_Delegates from twelve of the thirteen States (Rhode Island alone
being unrepresented) assembled at Philadelphia, where the opening
sessions of the first Constitutional Convention were held in this room
in Independence Hall, May 14, 1787. George Washington presided during
the four months taken to draft the Constitution of the United States.
When it was completed on September 17th, it is said that many of the
delegates seemed awe-struck and that Washington himself sat with his
head bowed in deep meditation. As the Convention adjourned, Franklin,
who was then over eighty-one years of age, arose and pointing to the
President's quaint armchair on the back of which was emblazoned a half
sun, brilliant with gilded rays, observed: "As I have been sitting
here all these weeks, I have often wondered whether yonder sun is
rising or setting, but now I know that it is a rising sun."_]

[Sidenote: He is unanimously elected president.]

After the elections had taken place, a general persuasion prevailed
that the public will, respecting the chief magistrate of the union,
had been too unequivocally manifested not to be certainly obeyed; and
several applications were made to General Washington for those offices
in the respective states, which would be in the gift of the president
of the United States.

As marking the frame of mind with which he came into the government,
the following extract is given from one of the many letters written to
persons whose pretensions he was disposed to favour. "Should it become
absolutely necessary for me to occupy the station in which your letter
presupposes me, I have determined to go into it, perfectly free from
all engagements of every nature whatsoever.--A conduct in conformity
to this resolution, would enable me, in balancing the various
pretensions of different candidates for appointments, to act with a
sole reference to justice and the public good. This is, in substance,
the answer that I have given to all applications (and they are not
few) which have already been made. Among the places sought after in
these applications, I must not conceal that the office to which you
particularly allude is comprehended. This fact I tell you merely as
matter of information. My general manner of thinking, as to the