To any one who carefully studies his life, it is evident that Washington was as warm-hearted and affectionate as he was great in character and ability, and that he was so without noise or pretense.  This really only amounts to saying that he was a well-balanced man, and yet even this cannot be said without admitting still another quality.  The sanest of all senses is the sense of humor, and the nature in which it is wholly lacking cannot be thoroughly rounded and complete.  Humor is not the most lofty of qualities, but it is one of the most essential, and it is generally assumed that Washington was very deficient in humor.  This idea has arisen from a hasty consideration of the subject, and from a superficial conception of humor itself.  To utter jests, or to say or write witty, brilliant, or amusing things, no doubt implies the possession of humor, but they are not the whole of it, for a man may have a fine sense of humor, and yet never make a joke nor utter a sarcasm.  The distinction between humor and the want of it lies much deeper than word of mouth.  The man without a sense of humor is sure to make a certain number of solemn blunders.  They may be in matters of importance or in the merest trifles, but they are blunders none the less, and come from insensibility to the incongruous, the ludicrous, or the impossible.  It may be said that common sense suffices to avoid these pitfalls, but this is really begging the question, inasmuch as common sense of a high order amounting almost to genius cannot exist without humor, for humor is the root and foundation of common sense.  Let us apply this test to Washington and we shall find that there never was a man who made fewer mistakes than he, down even to matters of the smallest detail.  Search his career from beginning to end, and there is not a solemn blunder to be found in it.  He was attacked and assailed both as general and President, but he was never laughed at.  In other words, he had a sense of humor which made it impossible for him to blunder solemnly, or to do or say anything which ridicule could touch.

It is not, however, necessary to leave his possession of a sense of humor to inference from his career and his freedom from blunders.  That he had humor strong, sane, and abundant is susceptible of much more direct proof; and the idea that he was lacking in this respect arose undoubtedly from the gravity of demeanor which was characteristic of the man.  He had assumed the heavy responsibilities of an important military command in the French war at an age when most men are just leaving college and beginning to study a profession.  This of itself sobered him, and added to his natural quiet and reserve, so that in estimating him in after-life this early and severe discipline at a most impressionable age ought never to be overlooked, for it had a very marked effect upon his character.