If your observance of this day were intended to make more secure the immortal fame of Washington, or to add to the strength and beauty of his imperishable monument built upon a nation’s affectionate remembrance, =your= purpose would be useless. Washington has no need of you. But in every moment, from the time he drew his sword in the cause of American independence to this hour, living or dead, the American people have needed him. It is not important now, nor will it be in all the coming years, to remind our countrymen that Washington has lived, and that his achievements in his country’s service are above all praise. But it is important--and more important now than ever before--that they should clearly apprehend and adequately value the virtues and ideals of which he was the embodiment, and that they should realize how essential to our safety and perpetuity are the consecration and patriotism which he exemplified. The American people need to-day the example and teachings of Washington no less than those who fashioned our =nation= needed his labors and guidance; and only so far as we commemorate his birth with a sincere recognition of this need can our commemoration be useful to the present generation. It is, therefore, above all things, absolutely essential to an appropriately commemorative condition of mind that there should be no toleration of even the shade of a thought that what Washington did and said and wrote, in aid of the young American republic have become in the least outworn, or that in these later days of material advance and development they may be merely pleasantly recalled with a sort of affectionate veneration, and with a kind of indulgent and loftily courteous concession of the value of Washington’s example and precepts. These constitute the richest of all our crown jewels; and, if we disregard them or depreciate their value, we shall be no better than “the base Indian who threw a pearl away richer than all his tribe.” They are full of stimulation to do grand and noble things, and full of lessons enjoining loyal adherence to public duty. But they teach nothing more impressive and nothing more needful by way of recalling our countrymen to a faith which has become somewhat faint and obscured than the necessity to national beneficence and the =people’s= happiness of the homely, simple, personal virtues that grow and thrive in the hearts of men who, with high intent, illustrate the goodness there is in human nature. Three months before his inauguration as first President of the republic which he had done so much to create, Washington wrote a letter to Lafayette, his warm friend and Revolutionary ally, in which he expressed his unremitting desire to establish a general system of policy which, if pursued, would “ensure permanent felicity to the commonwealth;” and he added these words: