Really, sisters, I can say no more. That whole scene was more than I can describe. It just sent me home dizzy with bewilderment. LVIII. DOWN THE POTOMAC. Dear sisters:--The Father of our Country was a great man--no doubt on that subject. He conducted a war on small means and with few men, which gave us a country that will be a crowning glory of all ages, if we don't melt down and go to nothing under the hot sunshine of our own prosperity. He was a great man and a good boy, not because he cut down the cherry-tree and wouldn't lie about it, for good boys and great men are not made out of one action, but a harmonious character which produces many good actions. Then again, I am not so certain that the action was what it is cracked up to be, anyway. In the first place, good little boys don't cut down their father's fruit-trees. Generally, they like to climb them a great deal better, especially when the cherries are ripe. I know that--being a girl, who could have borrowed a hatchet and made myself immortal by chopping instead of climbing to pick half-green cherries, which I did, and tore my frock, besides getting a pain in the--well, heart, which two things betrayed me just as the little hatchet betrayed George. Now, when my mother asked me what the mischief I'd been about, I didn't think of saying I couldn't lie, because I could, and longed to do it; but I knew that New England women would find me out and give me double "jessie" if I piled a whopper on top of the green cherries and torn frock, so I told her I didn't know, being conservative--took my whipping like a man and a trooper, scorning to cover up two sins under one pious truth. I didn't follow George Washington's example, for two reasons. First, I had never heard of the hatchet; and again, the story don't wash to a degree that is expected of high-priced morality. When the youthful boy, Father of our Country, said he _couldn't_ lie, he was a-doing it that very minute. What boy ever lived that couldn't lie? Lying is born in 'em, and they take to it as naturally as a kitten laps milk. The fellow that wrote that story was a botch. Why didn't he make little George say, "Father, I won't tell a lie; so there--I cut down the cherry-tree with my little hatchet." There would have been something heroic and above-board about that--a struggle against temptation foreshadowed, and a brave determination to stand up to the rack, fodder or no fodder, worthy of a boy that meant to be father of the man, who in his turn was the father of his country, thus doing up all his paternity in a wholesale way. But to say he couldn't was so sneakingly good that I don't believe it of him. In fact, I don't believe one word of the story. Put that down on the records of your Society. Of course, one never thinks of George Washington, that a nice boy, showing a hatchet, does not come in as the first picture.