never failed, on his way to Philadelphia, to stop at Wilmington and have a chat with one Captain O’Flinn, who kept a tavern and had been a Revolutionary soldier; and this was but a single instance among many of like character.  Any soldier of the Revolution was always sure of a welcome at the hands of his old commander.  Eminent statesmen, especially of the opposition, often found his manner cold, but no old soldier ever complained of it, no servant ever left him, and the country people about Mount Vernon loved him as a neighbor and friend, and not as the distant great man of the army and the presidency.

He believed thoroughly in popular government.  One does not find in his letters the bitter references to democracy and to the populace which can be discovered in the writings of so many of his party friends, legacies of pre-revolutionary ideas inflamed by hatred of Parisian mobs.  He always spoke of the people at large with a simple respect, because he knew that the future of the United States was in their hands and not in that of any class, and because he believed that they would fulfill their mission.  The French Revolution never carried him away, and when it bred anarchy and bloodshed he became hostile to French influence, because license and disorder were above all things hateful to him.  Yet he did not lose his balance in the other direction, as was the case with so many of his friends.  He resisted and opposed French ideas and French democracy, so admired and so loudly preached by Jefferson and his followers, because he esteemed them perilous to the country.  But there is not a word to indicate that he did not think that such dangers would be finally overcome, even if at the cost of much suffering, by the sane sense and ingrained conservatism of the American people.  Other men talked more noisily about the people, but no one trusted them in the best sense more than Washington, and his only fear was that evils might come from their being misled by false lights.

Once more, what is it to be an American?  Putting aside all the outer shows of dress and manners, social customs and physical peculiarities, is it not to believe in America and in the American people?  Is it not to have an abiding and moving faith in the future and in the destiny of America?—­something above and beyond the patriotism and love which every man whose soul is not dead within him feels for the land of his birth?  Is it not to be national and not sectional, independent and not colonial?  Is it not to have a high conception of what this great new country should be, and to follow out that ideal with loyalty and truth?