him think the provincials, as we were scornfully called, ten times
as numerous as we really were. But alas, I am old, I find, and lose
the thread of my story. It was of Washington I meant to speak.

Nobody could know General Washington that had not seen him as we
did, at that dark hour of the struggle. It seemed as if that man
never slept. All day he was planning, directing, contriving; and all
night long he would write--write--write; letters to Congress,
begging them to give him full powers, and all would go well, for he
did not want power for himself, but only power to serve them;
letters to the generals in the north, warning, comforting, and
advising them; letters to his family and friends, bidding them look
at him and do as he did; letters to influential men every where,
entreating them to enlist men and money for the holy cause.

He never rested; and, with the cold gray dawning, would order out
his horse and ride through and around the miserable tents, and where
we often slept under the bare heavens, and every heart was of bolder
and better cheer as he passed.

His look never changed. It was just the same steady face, whatever
went on before it; whether he saw us provincials beaten back, or
watched a thousand British regulars pile their arms after the
victory at Trenton.

He looked as he does in the great picture in Faneuil Hall, on the
right, as you stand before the rostrum. He stands there, by his
horse, just as I saw him before the passage of the Delaware, with
the steady, serious, immovable look that puts difficulties out of
countenance. It is the look of a man of sense and judgment, who has