The strength of Washington’s arm was shown on several occasions.  He threw a stone from the bed of the stream to the top of the Natural Bridge, Virginia, and another stone across the Rappahannock at Fredericksburg.  The stone was said to be a piece of slate about the size of a dollar with which he spanned the bold river, and it took the ground at least thirty yards on the other side.  Many have since tried this feat, but none have cleared the water.

In 1772 some young men were contending at Mount Vernon in the exercise of pitching the bar.  The Colonel looked on for a time, then grasping the missile in his master hand he whirled the iron through the air and it fell far beyond any of its former limits.  “You see, young gentlemen,” said the chief with a smile, “that my arm yet retains some portion of my early vigour.”  He was then in his fortieth year and probably in the fullness of his physical powers.  Those powers became rather mellowed than decayed by time, for “his age was like lusty winter, frosty yet kindly,” and up to his sixty-eighth year he mounted a horse with surprising agility and rode with ease and grace.  Rickets, the celebrated equestrian, used to say, “I delight to see the General ride and make it a point to fall in with him when I hear he is out on horseback—­his seat is so firm, his management so easy and graceful that I who am an instructor in horsemanship would go to him and learn to ride.”

In his later days, the General, desirous of riding pleasantly, procured from the North two horses of a breed for bearing the saddle.  They were well to look at, and pleasantly gaited under the saddle, but also scary and therefore unfitted for the service of one who liked to ride quietly on his farm, occasionally dismounting and walking in his fields to inspect improvements.  From one of these horses the General sustained a fall—­probably the only fall he ever had from a horse in his life.  It was upon a November evening, and he was returning from Alexandria to Mount Vernon with three friends and a groom.  Having halted a few moments he dismounted, and upon rising in his stirrup again, the horse, alarmed at the glare from a fire near the road-side, sprang from under his rider who came heavily to the ground.  His friends rushed to give him assistance, thinking him hurt.  But the vigorous old man was upon his feet again, brushing the dust from his clothes, and after thanking those who came to his aid said that he had had a very complete tumble, and that it was owing to a cause no horseman could well avoid or control—­that he was only poised in his stirrup, and had not yet gained his saddle when the scary animal sprang from under him.