The practical result was that the legislature took the question up, more in deference to the writer’s wishes and in gratitude for his services, than from any comprehension of what the scheme meant.  The companies were duly organized, and the promoter was given a hundred and fifty shares, on the ground that the legislature wished to take every opportunity of testifying their sense of “the unexampled merits of George Washington towards his country.”  Washington was much touched and not a little troubled by this action.  He had been willing, as he said, to give up his cherished privacy and repose in order to forward the enterprise.  He had gone to Maryland even, and worked to engage that State in the scheme, but he could not bear the idea of taking money for what he regarded as part of a great public policy.  “I would wish,” he said, “that every individual who may hear that it was a favorite plan of mine may know also that I had no other motive for promoting it than the advantage of which I conceived it would be productive to the Union, and to this State in particular, by cementing the eastern and western territory together, at the same time that it will give vigor and increase to our commerce, and be a convenience to our citizens.”

“How would this matter be viewed, then, by the eye of the world, and what would be the opinion of it, when it comes to be related that George Washington has received twenty thousand dollars and five thousand pounds sterling of the public money as an interest therein?” He thought it would make him look like a “pensioner or dependent” to accept this gratuity, and he recoiled from the idea.  There is something entirely frank and human in the way in which he says “George Washington,” instead of using the first pronoun singular.  He always saw facts as they were; he understood the fact called “George Washington” as perfectly as any other, and although he wanted retirement and privacy, he had no mock modesty in estimating his own place in the world.  At the same time, while he wished to be rid of the kindly gift, he shrank from putting on what he called the appearance of “ostentatious disinterestedness” by refusing it.  Finally he took the stock and endowed two charity schools with the dividends.  The scheme turned out successfully, and the work still endures, like the early surveys and various other things of a very different kind to which Washington put his hand.  In the greater forces which were presently set in motion for the preservation of the future empire, the inland navigation, started in Virginia, dropped out of sight, and became merely one of the rills which fed the mighty river.  But it was the only really practical movement possible at the precise moment when it was begun, and it was characteristic of its author, who always found, even in the most discouraging conditions, something that could be done.  It might be only a very little something, but still that was better than nothing to the strong man ever dealing with facts as they