in trifles were the same qualities which kept the American army together, and enabled their owner to arrive on time and in full preparation at Yorktown and Trenton.  The worst that can be said is that from his love of perfection and completeness he may in this respect have wasted time and strength, but his untiring industry and his capacity for work were so great that he accomplished so far as we can see all this drudgery without ever neglecting in the least more important duties.  It was a satisfaction to him to do it; for he was methodical and exact to the last degree, and he was never happy unless he held everything in which he was concerned easily within his grasp.

He had the same attention to details in external things, and he wished everything about him to be of the best, if not “express’d in fancy.”  He had the handsomest carriages and the finest horses always in his stables.  It was necessary that the furniture of his house should be as good as could be procured, and he was most particular in regard to it.  When he was preparing as President to move to Philadelphia, he made the most searching inquiries as to horses, stables, servants, schools for young Custis, and everything affecting the household.  He sent at the same time most minute directions to his agents as to the furniture of his house, touching upon everything, down to the color of the curtains and the form of his wine-coolers.  He had a like feeling in regard to dress.  His fancy for handsome and appropriate dress in his youth has already been alluded to, but he never ceased to take an interest in it; and in a letter to McHenry, written in the last year of his life, he discusses with great care the details of the uniform to be prescribed for himself as commander-in-chief of the new army.  It would be a mistake, of course, to infer that he was a dandy, or that he gave to dress and furniture the importance set upon them by shallow minds.  He simply valued them rightly, and enjoyed the good things of this world.  He had the best possible taste and the keenest sense of what was appropriate, and it was this good taste and sense of fitness which saved him from blundering in trifles, as much as his ability and his sense of humor preserved him from error in the conduct of great affairs.

The value of all this to the country he served cannot be too often reiterated, for ridicule was a real danger to the Revolutionary cause when it started.  The raw levies, headed by volunteer officers from the shop, the plough, the work-bench, or the trading vessel, despite their patriotism and the nobility of their cause, could easily have been made subjects of derision, a perilous enemy to all new undertakings.  Men prefer to be shot at, if they are taken seriously, rather than to be laughed at and made objects of contempt.  The same principle holds true of a revolution seeking the sympathy of a hostile world.  When Washington drew his sword beneath the Cambridge elm and put himself