The crowning glory in the life of the great elm was at hand. On the
twenty-first of June, Washington, without allowing himself time to take
leave of his family, set out on horseback from Philadelphia, arriving at
Cambridge on the second of July. Sprightly Dorothy Dudley in her Journal
describes the exercises of the third, with the florid eloquence of
youth.

"To-day, he (Washington) formally took command, under _one of the
grand old elms_ on the Common. It was a magnificent sight. The
majestic figure of the General, mounted upon his horse beneath the
wide-spreading branches of the patriarch tree; the multitude thronging
the plain around, and the houses filled with interested spectators of
the scene, while the air rung with shouts of enthusiastic welcome, as he
drew his sword, and thus declared himself Commander-in-chief of the
Continental army."

Dorothy does not specify under which elm Washington stood. It is safely
inferable from her language that our tree was one of several noble elms
which at this time were standing upon the Common.

Although no contemporaneous pen seems to have pointed out the exact tree
beyond all question, happily the day is not so far distant from us that
oral testimony is inadmissible. Of this there is enough to satisfy the
most captious critic.

Where the stone church is now situated, there was formerly an old
gambrel-roofed house, in which the Moore family lived during the
Revolution. The situation was very favorable for observation, commanding
the highroad from Watertown to Cambridge Common, and directly opposite