. Virginia, the Old Dominion, as seen from its colonial waterway, the historic river James, whose every succeeding turn reveals country replete with monuments and scenes recalling the march of history and its figures from the days of Captain John Smith to the present time . ariy dreams of further glory on French bat-tlefields were abandoned; and there was an-other feast at Shirley when bridal roses ofJune were in bloom. The young people wentto live at Stratford, the ancestral home of theLees; and there was born their famous son,Robert E. Lee. As Shirleys old dining-room thus broughtto
. Virginia, the Old Dominion, as seen from its colonial waterway, the historic river James, whose every succeeding turn reveals country replete with monuments and scenes recalling the march of history and its figures from the days of Captain John Smith to the present time . ariy dreams of further glory on French bat-tlefields were abandoned; and there was an-other feast at Shirley when bridal roses ofJune were in bloom. The young people wentto live at Stratford, the ancestral home of theLees; and there was born their famous son,Robert E. Lee. As Shirleys old dining-room thus broughtto our minds that greatest Virginian of ourday, so it brought to mind the greatest Vir-ginian of all days; for, even as we lookedat silver and thought of love stories, a life-size portrait of George Washington, byCharles Wilson Peale, stood looking downupon us from the panelled wall. It is a noted and Invaluable canvas thathangs there at Shirley, and it is doubtless agood likeness of the Father of our Country;but it is not just the George Washington thatmost of us have in our minds eye. Whenthe average American thinks of hatchets andcherry trees and abnormal truthfulness, theface that rises before him is that benign andfatherly one that he has seen a thousand times 376. PEALE S PORTRAIT OF GEORGE WASHINGTON. AN INCONGRUOUS BIT OF HOUSEBOATING in the popular reproductions of the portraitby Gilbert Stuart. Just as for generationsonly the good has been told of George Wash-ington, so has this handsomest picture (doubt-less a trifle flattering) always been the pop-ular one. However, in this day, when the idealGeorge Washington of story is being ruth-lessly brushed aside in the search for the realflesh-and-blood man, any canvas also that hasidealized him is somewhat in jeopardy. It is well that the Washington of Sparksand of Irving and of Stuart should be super-seded by the truer Washington of Mitchelland of Ford and of Peale; but the resultwill be that, for a while, the country willsca
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, booksubjecthistori, bookyear1921
