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-hearted and
the devoted pressed on to victory and honor.

Turn back to the battle of Saratoga. There were two Americans on that
field who suffered under a great personal disappointment: Philip
Schuyler, who was unjustly supplanted in command of the army by General
Gates; and Benedict Arnold, who was deprived by envy of his due share in