a full Christian and go
out on the farm and count up the happy slaves to see if any of them had
got away during the night.

By ginger, dad inspired me with new thoughts about the father of his
country. I had always thought of Washington as though he was constantly
crossing the Delaware in a skiff, through floating ice, with a cocked
hat on, and his coat flaps trimmed with buff nankeen stuff, a sort of
a male Eliza in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," getting away from the hounds that
were chasing her to chew her pants. I was always thinking of George
either chopping cherry trees, or standing on a pedestal to have his
picture taken, but here at the old farm, with dad to inspire me, I was
just mingling with Washington, the planter, the neighbor, telling the
negroes where they would get off at if they didn't pick cotton fast
enough, or breaking colts, or going to the churn and drinking a quart
of buttermilk, and getting the stomach ache, and calling upstairs to
Martha, who was at the spinning wheel, or knitting woolen socks, and
asking her to fix up a brandy smash to cure his griping pains. I thought
of the father of his country taking a severe cold, and not being able
to run into a drug store for a bottle of cough sirup, or a quinine pill,
having Martha fix a tub of hot mustard water to soak those great feet of
his, and bundle him up in a flannel blanket, give him a hot whisky, and
put him to bed with a hot brick at his feet.

Then, when I looked at a duck blind out in the Potomac, near the shore,
I thought how George used to put on an old coat and slouch hat and take
his gun and go out in the blind, and shoot canvas-back ducks for dinner,
and paddle his boat out after the dead birds, the way Grover Cleveland
did a century later. I tell you, old man, the way to appreciate our
great statesmen, soldiers and scholars is to think of them just as
plain, ordinary citizens, doing the things men do nowadays. It does dad
and I more good to think of Washington and his friends camping out down
the Potomac, on a fishing trip, sleeping on a bed of pine boughs, and
cooking their own pork, and roasting sweet potatoes in the ashes, eating
with appetites like slaves, than to think of him at a state dinner in
the white house, with a French cook disguising the food so they could
not tell what it was.

O, I had rather have a picture of George Washington and Lafayette coming
up the bank of the Potomac toward the house, loaded down with ducks, and
Marth