It is not to be supposed from this that Washington was above considering the popular bent, or was lacking in political astuteness.  John Adams asserted that “General Washington, one of the most attentive men in the world to the manner of doing things, owed a great proportion of his celebrity to this circumstance,” and frequently he is to be found considering the popularity or expediency of courses.  In 1776 he said, “I have found it of importance and highly expedient to yield to many points in fact, without seeming to have done it, and this to avoid bringing on a too frequent discussion of matters which in a political view ought to be kept a little behind the curtain, and not to be made too much the subjects of disquisition.  Time only can eradicate and overcome customs and prejudices of long standing—­they must be got the better of by slow and gradual advances.”

Elsewhere he wrote, “In a word, if a man cannot act in all respects as he would wish, he must do what appears best, under the circumstances he is in.  This I aim at, however short I may fall of the end;” of a certain measure he thought, “it has, however, like many other things in which I have been involved, two edges, neither of which can be avoided without falling on the other;” and that even in small things he tried to be politic is shown in his journey through New England, when he accepted an invitation to a large public dinner at Portsmouth, and the next day, being at Exeter, he wrote in his diary, “a jealousy subsists between this town (where the Legislature alternately sits) and Portsmouth; which, had I known it in time, would have made it necessary to have accepted an invitation to a public dinner, but my arrangements having been otherwise made, I could not.”

Nor was Washington entirely lacking in finesse.  He offered Patrick Henry a position after having first ascertained in a roundabout manner that it would be refused, and in many other ways showed that he understood good politics.  Perhaps the neatest of his dodges was made when the French revolutionist Volney asked him for a general letter of introduction to the American people.  This was not, for political and personal reasons, a thing Washington cared to give, yet he did not choose to refuse, so he wrote on a sheet of paper,—­

“C.  Volney
     needs no recommendation from
                      Geo. Washington.”

There is a very general belief that success in politics and truthfulness are incompatible, yet, as already shown, Washington prospered in politics, and the Rev. Mason L. Weems is authority for the popular statement that at six years of age George could not tell a lie.  Whether this was so, or whether Mr. Weems was drawing on his imagination for his facts, it seems probable that Washington partially outgrew the disability in his more mature years.