I acknowledge the remark was intended for the President, as such, he received it.  A few days after, in conversation with, I believe, a Senator of the U.S. he told me he had dined the day before with the President, who in the course of the conversation at the table, said, that on the preceding Sunday, he had received a very just reproof from the pulpit, for always leaving the church before the administration of the Sacrament; that he honored the preacher for his integrity and candour; that he had never considered the influence of his example; that he would never again give cause for the repetition of the reproof; and that, as he had never been a communicant, were he to become one then, it would be imputed to an ostentatious display of religious zeal arising altogether from his elevated station.  Accordingly he afterwards never came on the morning of Sacrament Sunday, tho’ at other times, a constant attendant in the morning.”

Nelly Custis, too, tells us that Washington always “stood during the devotional part of the service,” and Bishop White states that “his behavior was always serious and attentive; but, as your letter seems to intend an inquiry on the point of kneeling during the service, I owe it to the truth to declare, that I never saw him in the said attitude.”  Probably his true position is described by Madison, who is quoted as saying that he did “not suppose that Washington had ever attended to the arguments for Christianity, and for the different systems of religion, or in fact that he had formed definite opinions on the subject.  But he took these things as he found them existing, and was constant in his observances of worship according to the received forms of the Episcopal Church, in which he was brought up.”

If there was proof needed that it is mind and not education which pushes a man to the front, it is to be found in the case of Washington.  Despite his want of education, he had, so Bell states, “an excellent understanding.”  Patrick Henry is quoted as saying of the members of the Congress of 1774—­ the body of which Adams claimed that “every man in it is a great man, an orator, a critic, a statesman”—­that “if you speak of solid information and sound judgment Colonel Washington is unquestionably the greatest man on the floor;” while Jefferson asserted that “his mind was great and powerful, without being of the very first order; his penetration strong, though not so acute as that of a Newton, Bacon, or Locke; and as far as he saw, no judgment was ever sounder.  It was slow in operation, being little aided by invention or imagination, but sure in conclusion.”

IV

RELATIONS WITH THE FAIR SEX

The book from which Washington derived almost the whole of his education warned its readers,—­

“Young Men have ever more a special care That Womanish Allurements prove not a snare;”