Intellect, then, needs _body_. Come, then, and see me build a Man! A
calm, silent devotion, a conscience pure and reverent, a heart manful
and true, an intellect clear and keen, a frame of iron,--with these will
we dower our hero, and call him Washington!

From me Washington needs no eulogy. Free America is at once his eulogy
and his monument! It is useless to say more. Every one here feels in his
heart a higher praise than can be uttered by the tongue. But let me ask
you, What would Washington's qualities of mind and heart have availed
his country, unless the manly strength, the frame of iron had been
added? A good man he might have been, a patriot he surely would have
been; but the Father of his Country, never! The soul that trusted in
God, the conscience that felt the omnipotence of justice and right, the
heart that beat for his country's weal alone, the mind that thought out
her freedom, was upborne by the body that knew no fatigue, by the nerves
that knew not how to tremble.

Washington had to endure physical fatigue enough to have killed three
ordinary men. And how well did his youth prepare him for a
life of protracted toil. Hear his biographer Irving. "He was a
self-disciplinarian in physical as well as mental matters, and practised
himself in all kinds of athletic exercises, such as running, leaping,
pitching quoits, and tossing bars. His frame even in infancy had been
large and powerful, and he now excelled most of his playmates in
contests of agility and strength. As a proof of his muscular power, a
place is still pointed out at Fredericksburg, near the lower ferry,
where, when a boy, he threw a stone across the river. In horsemanship,
too, he already excelled, and was ready to back, and able to manage, the
most fiery steed. Traditional anecdotes still remain of his achievements
in this respect."