Hero Tales From American History | Page 7

like Hannibal, or Caesar, or Napoleon, of which the world has had only three or four examples. But he was a great soldier of the type which the English race has produced, like Marlborough and Cromwell, Wellington, Grant, and Lee. He was patient under defeat, capable of large combinations, a stubborn and often reckless fighter, a winner of battles, but much more, a conclusive winner in a long war of varying fortunes. He was, in addition, what very few great soldiers or commanders have ever been, a great constitutional statesman, able to lead a people along the paths of free government without undertaking himself to play the part of the strong man, the usurper, or the savior of society.
He was a very silent man. Of no man of equal importance in the world's history have we so few sayings of a personal kind. He was ready enough to talk or to write about the public duties which he had in hand, but he hardly ever talked of himself. Yet there can be no greater error than to suppose Washington cold and unfeeling, because of his silence and reserve. He was by nature a man of strong desires and stormy passions. Now and again he would break out, even as late as the presidency, into a gust of anger that would sweep everything before it. He was always reckless of personal danger, and had a fierce fighting spirit which nothing could check when it was once unchained.
But as a rule these fiery impulses and strong passions were under the absolute control of an iron will, and they never clouded his judgment or warped his keen sense of justice.
But if he was not of a cold nature, still less was he hard or unfeeling. His pity always went out to the poor, the oppressed, or the unhappy, and he was all that was kind and gentle to those immediately about him.
We have to look carefully into his life to learn all these things, for the world saw only a silent, reserved man, of courteous and serious manner, who seemed to stand alone and apart, and who impressed every one who came near him with a sense of awe and reverence.
One quality he had which was, perhaps, more characteristic of the man and his greatness than any other. This was his perfect veracity of mind. He was, of course, the soul of truth and honor, but he was even more than that. He never deceived himself He always looked facts squarely in the face and dealt with them as such, dreaming no dreams, cherishing no delusions, asking no impossibilities,--just to others as to himself, and thus winning alike in war and in peace.
He gave dignity as well as victory to his country and his cause. He was, in truth, a "character for after ages to admire."

DANIEL BOONE AND THE FOUNDING OF KENTUCKY
. . . Boone lived hunting up to ninety; And, what's still stranger, left behind a name For which men vainly decimate the throng, Not only famous, but of that GOOD fame, Without which glory's but a tavern song,-- Simple, serene, the antipodes of shame, Which hate nor envy e'er could tinge with wrong;
'T is true he shrank from men, even of his nation; When they built up unto his darling trees, He moved some hundred miles off, for a station Where there were fewer houses and more ease;
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But where he met the individual man, He showed himself as kind as mortal can.
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The freeborn forest found and kept them free, And fresh as is a torrent or a tree.
And tall, and strong, and swift of foot were they, Beyond the dwarfing city's pale abortions, Because their thoughts had never been the prey Of care or gain; the green woods were their portions
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Simple they were, not savage; and their rifles, Though very true, were yet not used for trifles.
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Serene, not sullen, were the solitudes Of this unsighing people of the woods. --Byron.

DANIEL BOONE AND THE FOUNDING OF KENTUCKY
Daniel Boone will always occupy a unique place in our history as the archetype of the hunter and wilderness wanderer. He was a true pioneer, and stood at the head of that class of Indian-fighters, game-hunters, forest-fellers, and backwoods farmers who, generation after generation, pushed westward the border of civilization from the Alleghanies to the Pacific. As he himself said, he was "an instrument ordained of God to settle the wilderness." Born in Pennsylvania, he drifted south into western North Carolina, and settled on what was then the extreme frontier. There he married, built a log cabin, and hunted, chopped trees, and tilled the ground like any other frontiersman. The Alleghany Mountains still marked a boundary