the cabinet and for
the Supreme Court, not an exclusive group of personal friends, but men
who can be trusted to serve the great cause of Union with fidelity and
power--Jefferson, Randolph, Hamilton, Knox, John Jay, Wilson, Cushing,
Rutledge. See how patiently and indomitably he gives himself to the toil
of office, deriving from his exalted station no gain "beyond the lustre
which may be reflected from its connection with a power of promoting
human felicity." See how he retires, at last, to the longed-for joys of
private life, confessing that his career has not been without errors of
judgment, beseeching the Almighty that they may bring no harm to his
country, and asking no other reward for his labors than to partake, "in
the midst of my fellow-citizens, the benign influence of good laws under
a free government, the ever favorite object of my heart."

Oh, sweet and stately words, revealing, through their calm reserve, the
inmost secret of a life that did not flare with transient enthusiasm but
glowed with unquenchable devotion to a cause! "The ever favorite object
of my heart"--how quietly, how simply he discloses the source and origin
of a sublime consecration, a lifelong heroism! Thus speaks the victor in
calm retrospect of the long battle. But if you would know the depth and
the intensity of the divine fire that burned within his breast you must
go back to the dark and icy days of Valley Forge, and hear him cry in
passion unrestrained: "If I know my own mind, I could offer myself a
living sacrifice to the butchering enemy, provided that would contribute
to the people's ease. I would be a living offering to the savage fury
and die by inches to save the people."

"_The ever favorite object of my heart_!" I strike this note again and
again, insisting upon it, harping upon it; for it is the key-note of the
music. It is the capacity to find such an object in the success of the
people's cause, to follow it unselfishly, to serve it loyally, that
distinguishes the men who stood with Washington and who deserve to share
his fame. I read the annals of the Revolution, and I find everywhere
this secret and searching test dividing the strong from the weak, the
noble from the base, the heirs of glory from the captives of oblivion
and the inheritors of shame. It was the unwillingness to sink and forget
self in the service of something greater that made the failures and
wrecks of those tempestuous times, through which the single-hear