a day, the speaker set before his audiences "not an ideal hero, wrapped in cloudy generalities and a mist of vague panegyric, but the real, identical man." And, again, he quoted Washington's letter written to Governor Dinwiddie after Braddock's defeat, that his hearers might "see it all—see the whole man." Was Edward Everett mistaken, are these letters not extant today, or are they unread? Surely, the last supposition must be the true one, if the man Washington is being forgotten.
And look back to the school histories of Edward Everett's time. The "reader" and "history" were one text-book in that day, and one of the best known, "Porter's Rhetorical Reader," lies before me, prefaced May, 1831. From it notice two quotations which must have influenced youthful ideas of Washington. One is the last verse of Pierpont's "Washington:"
"God of our sires and sons,
Let other Washingtons
Our country bless,
And, like the brave and wise
Of by-gone centuries,
Show that true greatness lies
In righteousness."
