a
dinner-table, comprising several members of the Congress, that La
Fayette was introduced to Washington. The boy-general found
himself warmly welcomed by the chief whom he had long admired.
"When you come to the army," said Washington, "I shall be pleased
if you will make my quarters your home, and consider yourself as
one of my family." The invitation thus frankly tendered was no
less frankly accepted. Thus did a cordial intimacy arise between
them, Washington at all times treating La Fayette with fatherly
kindness, and La Fayette looking up to Washington with filial
regard.

La Fayette had already begun to speak a little English, and by
degrees acquired more. But to the last the difficulties of the
language were a main obstacle, not only to himself, but to every
other foreigner who served with, or under, the United States. Thus
there are still preserved some of the ill-spelled and scarcely
intelligible notes of Count Pulasky, during the short time that he
served as general of cavalry. Still worse was the case of Baron
Steuben, a veteran of the school of Frederick the Second, who
joined the Americans a few months later than La Fayette, and who
greatly aided them in the establishment of discipline. The Baron,
it appears, could not teach and drill, nor even swear and curse,
but by means of an interpreter! He was, therefore, most fortunate
in securing as his aid-de-camp Captain Walker of New-York--most
fortunate, if, as his American biographer assures us, "there was
not, perhaps, another officer in the army, unless Hamilton be
excepted, who could speak French and English so as to be well
understood in both."

La Fayette did not always confine himself to the bounds of his own
profession; sometimes, and, perhaps, not greatly to his credit, he
stepped beyond them. Here is one case recorded with much
satisfaction by himself. He states, that soon after his arrival in
America, and while attending on Sunday the service of the Church
of England, he was displeased with the clergyman, because in his
sermon he had said nothing at all of politics. "I charged him to
his face," says La Fayette, "with preaching only about Heaven!...
But next Sunday," continues the keen young officer, "I heard him
again, when his loud invectives against 'the execrable House of
Hanover,' showed that he