a comic entertainment, discovering at one view his passionate fondness for your friend, his inviolable love of truth, his unfathomable knowledge, and the masterly strokes of his wisdom in displaying it.  You are heartily welcome to make use of any letter or letters which I may at any time have written to you; for although I keep no copies of epistles to my friends, nor can remember the contents of all of them, yet I am sensible that the narrations are just, and that truth and honesty will appear in my writings; of which, therefore, I shall not be ashamed, though criticism may censure my style.”

Perhaps a little more patience would have produced better results, but it is pleasant to find one man, in that period of stupidity and incompetency, who was ready to free his mind in this refreshing way.  The only wonder is that he was not driven from his command.  That they insisted on keeping him there shows beyond everything that he had already impressed himself so strongly on Virginia that the authorities, although they smarted under his attacks, did not dare to meddle with him.  Dinwiddie and the rest could foil him in obtaining a commission in the king’s army, but they could not shake his hold upon the people.

In the winter of 1758 his health broke down completely.  He was so ill that he thought that his constitution was seriously injured; and therefore withdrew to Mount Vernon, where he slowly recovered.  Meantime a great man came at last to the head of affairs in England, and inspired by William Pitt, fleets and armies went forth to conquer.  Reviving at the prospect, Washington offered his services to General Forbes, who had come to undertake the task which Braddock had failed to accomplish.  Once more English troops appeared, and a large army was gathered.  Then the old story began again, and Washington, whose proffered aid had been gladly received, chafed and worried all summer at the fresh spectacle of delay and stupidity which was presented to him.  His advice was disregarded, and all the weary business of building new roads through the wilderness was once more undertaken.  A detachment, sent forward contrary to his views, met with the fate of Braddock, and as the summer passed, and autumn changed to winter, it looked as if nothing would be gained in return for so much toil and preparation.  But Pitt had conquered the Ohio in Canada, news arrived of the withdrawal of the French, the army pressed on, and, with Washington in the van, marched into the smoking ruins of Fort Duquesne, henceforth to be known to the world as Fort Pitt.

So closed the first period in Washington’s public career.  We have seen him pass through it in all its phases.  It shows him as an adventurous pioneer, as a reckless frontier fighter, and as a soldier of great promise.  He learned many things in this time, and was taught much in the hard school of adversity.  In the effort to conquer Frenchmen and Indians he studied the art of war, and at the same time he learned