skilful and experienced fighter, and a colonel in the Virginia service.
What a contrast to our college under-graduates of to-day, who at
twenty-two years of age are still getting their bodily vigor through
sports and not through real work, and who seldom seem to realize that,
just as soon as they have acquired the use of the intellectual tools and
stock with which a livelihood is to be earned in business or in the
professions, the training of active life is immeasurably better than the
training of the schools! Yet Washington never showed at any age the
least spark of genius; he was only "sober, sensible, honest, and
brave," as he said of Major-General Lincoln in 1791.

By inheritance and by marriage Washington became, while he was still
young, one of the richest men in the country; but what a contrast
between his sort of riches and our sorts! He was a planter and
sportsman--a country gentleman. All his home days were spent in looking
after his farms; in breeding various kinds of domestic animals; in
fishing for profit; in attending to the diseases and accidents which
befall livestock, including slaves; in erecting buildings, and repairing
them; in caring for or improving his mills, barns, farm implements, and
tools. He always lived very close to nature, and from his boyhood
studied the weather, the markets, his crops and woods, and the various
qualities of his lands. He was an economical husbandman, attending to
all the details of the management of his large estates. He was
constantly on horseback, often riding fifteen miles on his daily rounds.
At sixty-seven years of age he caught the cold which killed him by
getting wet on horseback, riding as usual about his farms.

Compare this sort of life, physical and mental, with the life of the
ordinary rich American of to-day, who has made his money in stocks and
bonds, or as a banker, broker, or trader, or in the management of great