He was not perhaps exactly joyous or gay of nature, but he had a contented and happy disposition, and, like all robust, well-balanced men, he possessed strong animal spirits and a keen sense of enjoyment.  He loved a wild, open-air life, and was devoted to rough out-door sports.  He liked to wrestle and run, to shoot, ride or dance, and to engage in all trials of skill and strength, for which his great muscular development suited him admirably.  With such tastes, it followed almost as a matter of course that he loved laughter and fun.  Good, hearty, country fun, a ludicrous mishap, a practical joke, all merriment of a simple, honest kind, were highly congenial to him, especially in his youth and early manhood.  Here is the way, for example, in which he described in his diary a ball he attended in 1760:  “In a convenient room, detached for the purpose, abounded great plenty of bread and butter, some biscuits, with tea and coffee which the drinkers of could not distinguish from hot water sweetened.  Be it remembered that pocket handkerchiefs served the purposes of tablecloths, and that no apologies were made for them.  I shall therefore distinguish this ball by the style and title of the bread-and-butter ball.”  The wit is not brilliant, but there was a good hearty laugh in the young man who jots down this little memorandum in his diary.

The years after the French war were happy years, free from care and full of simple pleasures.  Then came the Revolution, bringing with it a burden such as has seldom been laid upon any man, and the seriousness bred by earlier experiences, came back with tenfold force.  The popular saying was that Washington never smiled during the war, and, roughly speaking, this was quite true.  In all those years of danger and trial, inasmuch as he was a man big of heart and brain, he had the gravity and the sadness born of responsibility, and the suffering sure to come to an unselfish mind.  It was at this time that he began to be most closely observed of men, and hence came the idea that he never laughed, and therefore was a being devoid of humor, the most sympathetic of gifts.  But as a matter of fact, the old sense of fun never left him.  It would come to his aid at the most serious moments, just as an endless flow of stories brought relief to Lincoln and carried him round many jagged corners.  With Washington it was hearty, laughing mirth at some ludicrous incident.  Putnam riding into Cambridge with an old woman clinging behind him; Greene searching for his wig while it was on his head; a young braggart flung over the head of an unbroken colt; or a good, rollicking story from Colonel Seammel or Major Fairlie,—­all these would delight Washington, and send him off into peals of inextinguishable laughter.  It was ever the old, hearty love of fun born of animal spirits, which never left him, and which would always break out on sufficient provocation.  Mr. Parton would have us believe that this was all, and that the common-place hero whom he describes never rose above the level of the humor conveyed by grinning through a horse-collar.  Even admitting the truth of this, a real love of honest fun and of a hearty laugh is a kindly quality that all men like.