Excerpt from George Washington: An Address Delivered in the First Congregational Church of Oak Park, Illinois on Sunday, February 22, 1920 There was a time, covering perhaps the first half century after the death of Washington, when excessive adulation characterized the ordinary estimate of his life. It is hard for us to read with patience the panegyrics of that period. They move us as little as Canova's statute of Washington in the toga of a Roman senator. It is good sculpture, but we have lost the man; and have gained instead a barren and unsatisfying substitute created by the eulo gists. To this epoch of apotheosis in popular thought there suc ceeded another and reactionary epoch. I very well remember hear ing Albion W. To-urgee in a lecture speak with something hardly less than scorn both of the generalship 'and the statesmanship of Washington. He ridiculed the vanity of Washington in having his horses' hoofs blacked and not forgetting to charge the govern ment with the dollar that it cost him, and demanded to know how Washington might have handled an army like that of General Grant. We have succeeded to a third and more happy period than either. Washington to us is not the demigod, but a very humanman with limitations and weaknesseswhich we freely acknowledge. But, on the other hand, he has ceased to be a commonplace hero. We are still living in the lingering smoke of the world-war, but we are far enough from our Civil War with its galaxy of strong and able soldiers to see them also in perspective, and to estimate Washington somewhat more dispassionately than was possible thirty or forty years ago. We have had generals enough and Presidents enough and statesmen enough to afford us ample com parisons, and to enable us to pass upon the name and character of our first great general and President and statesman as was not possible to any earlier generation. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.