peal to you."

"No," said his companion, with a laugh. "I much prefer having
something particular to get up for. But as I seldom have, I presume
that's merely another way of saying that every one wants what one
hasn't got. I fancy if I had to appear punctually at breakfast every
morning, I'd appreciate holidays a great deal more than I do now."

"I used to think we had too many. That was because it tears things up
so abominably in an insurance office to get two or three days' work
slammed at you at once. But I'm reconciled now. And if we celebrate
for any one, we certainly ought to do so for George."

"Seriously speaking, why?" Helen asked. "Probably I should be ashamed
of myself, but I've never been able to get up as much enthusiasm for
him as I feel I should. Can you tell me any way of doing so?"

"I can tell you how I came to, at all events," said her companion.
"The story may not be so romantic, but it made more of a hit with me
than the account of the same heroic gentleman nearly freezing to death
at Valley Forge, or standing up in a boat while he crossed the
Delaware, which is a silly thing to do, even for a hero. Nothing of
that sort. But somewhere--I forget just where--I ran across the
account of a little episode which showed me that the General was a man
of real ability, after all."

"What was it?" asked the girl, with interest.

"Well, it seems that some earnest society of antiquaries had been
digging up the back yards of Rhode Island and making idiots of
themselves generally in an effort to prove that the Vikings came to
America."

"But they did come, didn't they?" Helen interrupted.

"Of course they did; but it wasn't known in Washington's time.
However, somebody with a vein of enterprise or malice had salted a
Viking mine, so to speak, and under the auspices--and the pay--of the
society had contrived to exhume a stone tablet on which were some
extremely apropos inscriptions, proving exactly what the amiable old
gentlemen desired to prove."

"About the Vikings?"

"Yes. Well, the discovery of this tablet made a deep impression. The
society held meetings and passed resolutions and went through all kinds
of ponderous and absurd conventionalities, culminating in asking
General Washington--at that time I don't believe he was President--to
make a speech. He came over from Boston, and they showed him the
tablet. And after he had looked it carefully over, he casually called
their attention