For my part, I would rather have heard the speech which Washington made at the convention in Williamsburg in the August before, when he rose up to read the resolution which he and his neighbors had passed at their meeting in Fairfax County. The eloquence of a man who is a famous orator is not quite so convincing as that of a man of action, who rarely speaks, but who is finally stirred by a great occasion. People were used to hearing Washington say a few words in a slow, hesitating, deliberate way; and they knew that he had carefully considered beforehand what words he should use. But this time he was terribly in earnest, and when he had read the resolution, he spoke as no one had heard him before. He was a passionate man who had his anger under control; but when it occasionally burst out, it was as if a dam to a stream had given way. And now he was consumed with indignation at the manner in which Great Britain was treating the colonies. He was ready, he said, to raise a regiment of a thousand men, pay all their expenses, and lead them to Boston to drive out the King's soldiers. The three men, therefore, must have talked long and earnestly as they rode to Philadelphia; for the Congress which they were to attend was the first one to which all the colonies were invited to send delegates. It was to consider the cause of the whole people, and Virginia was to see in Massachusetts not a rival colony, but one with which she had common cause. The last time Washington had gone over the road he had been on an errand to the King's chief representative in America, the Commander-in-Chief, Governor Shirley, and one matter which he had held very much at heart had been his own commission as an officer in His Majesty's army. He was on a different errand now. Still, like the men who were most in earnest at that time, he was thinking how the colonies could secure their rights as colonies, not how they might break away from England and set up for themselves. [Footnote D: The above illustration is reproduced from Irving's "Life of Washington," by kind permission of Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons.]