HOW TO GET STRONG
string; his countenance lofty, masculine, and contemplative; his eye light gray. He was dressed in clothes of a citizen, and over them a blue surtout of the finest cloth. His weight must have been two hundred and thirty pounds, with no superfluous flesh. All was bone and sinew; and he walked like a soldier.'
"Whoever has seen in the Patent Office at Washington the dress he wore when resigning his commission as Commander-in-Chief in December, 1783, at once perceives how large and magnificent was his frame.
"During the parade, he saw something at a distance. His eye was instantly lighted up as with the lightning's flash. At this moment I see its marvellous animation, its glaring fire; exhibiting strong passion, controlled by deliberate reason.
"Rickets, the celebrated equestrian, used to say, 'I delight to see the General ride; and make it a point to fall in with him when I hear that he is abroad on horseback. His seat is so firm, his management so easy and graceful, that I, who am a professor of horsemanship, would go to him and learn to ride.'
"Bred in the vigorous school of the frontier warfare; the earth his bed, his canopy the heavens, he excelled the hunter and woodman in their athletic habits; and in the trials of manhood which distinguished the hardy days of his early life.
"He was amazingly swift of foot; and could climb the mountain-steep and not a sob confess his toil.
"In person, Washington, as we have said, was unique. He looked like no one else. To a stature lofty and commanding he united a form of the manliest proportions; limbs cast in nature's finest mould; and a carriage the most dignified, graceful, and imposing. No one ever approached the pater patriæ that did not feel his presence.
"While several pictures and sculptures are excellent likenesses of his physiognomy, in various stages of life, there has been a general failure in the delineation of his figure. His manliness has been misrepresented by bulkiness; while his vigorous, elastic frame, in which so many graces combined, has been drawn from the model of Ajax, when its true personification should be that of Achilles.
"With all its development of muscular power, the form of Washington had no appearance of bulkiness; and so harmonious were its proportions that he did not appear so passing tall as his portraits have represented. He was rather spare than full during his whole life."
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