oved to be a very cold one, and poor Gist's
feet and hands were frozen before morning. Washington got no
frost-bites, but his sufferings must have been great.

During the night that part of the stream which lay between the island
and the shore that Washington wished to reach froze over, and in the
morning the travellers were able to renew their journey. Once across
that, the worst of their troubles were over.

Is it any wonder that a young man who did his duty in this way rapidly
rose to distinction? He was always in earnest in his work, and always
did it with all his might. He never shammed or shirked. He never let his
own comfort or his own interest stand in the way when there was a duty
to be done. He was a great man before he became a celebrated one, and
the wisest men in the country found out the fact.

When the revolution came there were other soldiers older and better
known than Washington, but there were men in Congress who had watched
his career carefully. They made him, therefore, commander-in-chief of
the American armies, knowing that nobody else was so sure to do the very
best that could be done for the country. They did not make him a great
man by appointing him to the chief command; they appointed him because
they knew he was a great man already.

THE STORY OF CATHERINE.

Peter the Great, the emperor who, in a few years, changed Russia from a
country of half-savage tribes into a great European nation, was one day
visiting one of his officers, and saw in his house a young girl, who
attracted his attention by her beauty and her graceful manners. This
girl was a prisoner named Martha, and she was living as a sort of
servant and housekeeper in the family of the Russian officer. She had
been taken prisoner when the town she lived in was captured. Nobody
knows, even to this day, exactly who she was, except that she was a poor
orphan girl who had been brought up by a village clergyman; but it is
generally believed that her father was a Livonian peasant.

Martha's beauty and the brightness of her mind pleased the emperor so
much that, after a while, he made up his mind to marry her, in spite of
her humble origin. Peter was in the habit of doing pretty much as he
pleased, whether his nobles liked it or not; but even he dared not make
a captive peasant girl the Empress of Russia. He therefore married her
privately, in the presence of a few of his nearest friends, who were
charged to keep the secret. Be