s Falls Church is probably the most
thoroughly American community in the country. This distinction, if
admitted, must come as a natural sequence from its situation as a suburb
of the Nation's capital, from the cosmopolitan character of its society,
and from the fact that so many of its residents are connected with the
Executive Departments as a part of the machinery of representative
government.

The village is situated in a county of the Old Dominion rich in events
of historic interest. In Colonial days, in the times of the Revolution,
as in the days of the civil strife, Fairfax County furnished her quota
of illustrious sons. At Gunston Hall on the Potomac dwelt George Mason,
author of the Virginia Bill of Rights, pronounced the most remarkable
paper of the epoch, and the foundation of the great American assertion
of independence as afterward draughted by Jefferson. In Fairfax County
lived and died the immortal Washington, and his ashes repose in its
soil at his beloved Mount Vernon. During the late civil war every part
of its territory was a battle ground and breast-works thrown up by
contending armies over a generation ago may still be seen here and there
within its borders. At the beginning of our war with Spain twenty-five
thousand volunteer soldiers from a dozen States pitched their tents on a
favored spot in this ancient county, where they were schooled to
proficiency in the art of modern warfare.

The old Episcopal church, from which Falls Church takes its name, still
stands as a monument linking colonial days with the present. Around it
cluster memories of great events in American history, for past its
substantial walls have marched soldiers of all our leading wars since
the day Washington guided the lordly Braddock over the road hard by down
to the time of our recent war with Spain. The old church has passed
through many vicissitudes since Washington worshipped there. It served
as a recruiting station for patriots of the Revolution, then abandoned
as a house of worship for a long period of years; subsequently it was
reopened and throughout the civil war used alternately as a hospital and
a stable by the Union Army. To complete the chain of events in this
connection soldiers enlisted for the Spanish-American war were encamped
near by and pickets of the camp stood guard under the shadow of its
walls.

Falls Church thirty years ago was a mere hamlet of, perhaps, a dozen
houses. It is to-day the largest town in