prejudices and illusions--these were gifts in combination which would
have made him distinguished in any company, in any age.

But what was it that won and kept a free field for the exercise of these
gifts? What was it that secured for them a long, unbroken opportunity of
development in the activities of leadership, until they reached the
summit of their perfection? It was a moral quality. It was the evident
magnanimity of the man, which assured the people that he was no
self-seeker who would betray their interests for his own glory or rob
them for his own gain. It was the supreme magnanimity of the man, which
made the best spirits of the time trust him implicitly, in war and
peace, as one who would never forget his duty or his integrity in the
sense of his own greatness.

From the first, Washington appears not as a man aiming at prominence or
power, but rather as one under obligation to serve a cause. Necessity
was laid upon him, and he met it willingly. After Washington's
marvellous escape from death in his first campaign for the defence of
the colonies, the Rev. Samuel Davies, fourth president of Princeton
College, spoke of him in a sermon as "that heroic youth, Colonel
Washington, whom I can but hope Providence has hitherto preserved in so
signal a manner for some important service to his country." It was a
prophetic voice, and Washington was not disobedient to the message.
Chosen to command the Army of the Revolution in 1775, he confessed to
his wife his deep reluctance to surrender the joys of home, acknowledged
publicly his feeling that he was not equal to the great trust committed
to him, and then, accepting it as thrown upon him "by a kind of
destiny," he gave himself body and soul to its fulfilment refusing all
pay beyond the mere discharge of his expenses, of which he kept a strict
account, and asking no other reward than the success of the cause which