"It's all right," Mr. Norton told him. "A girl is the greatest thing in the world, unless it is a boy. Anyhow, George Washington was a splendid type of American boyhood and he surely liked the girls; used to write poetry about them when he was your age." I don't know why, but somehow we seemed to think more of Washington after we had heard that. It seemed to bring him closer to us and make him a real person, instead of a picture on the wall, praying at Valley Forge or crossing the Delaware. Most always Washington is crossing the Delaware when you see him. "He was a big fellow in the first place, while Napoleon was small. Size of body doesn't always count. Some of the greatest men the world has produced have been small of stature. But George Washington was a big fellow. Like Lincoln, he could outwrestle, outthrow, and outjump any of his mates. They still show a spot down in Fredericksburg where he stood and threw a stone across the Rappahannock River. He didn't seem to know the meaning of fear. From his early youth he was a fine horseman, taming and riding horses that nobody else could manage." "Did his mother call him Georgie?" asked Benny, before we could stop him. "Perhaps she did, although I hardly can imagine it. At the age of fourteen George wanted to enter the English navy and he came pretty near doing it. If he had, perhaps he would have become a great admiral instead of the father of his country. Who knows? "A midshipman's warrant was obtained for him, so the story goes, and his clothes actually had been sent aboard a man-of-war. Then, at the last minute, his mother found that she could not give up her oldest boy and she withdrew her consent. It was a great disappointment to the boy, but like the good Scout that he was he obeyed his mother and went back to school. He learned to be a surveyor. "Boys matured earlier in those days when the country was new. When Washington was only sixteen he set out on horseback through the Blue Ridge Mountains on a surveying trip. A year afterward he was given command of the militia in a Virginia district, with the rank of major." "I don't see what LaSalle had to do with all that," said Harry. "He didn't have anything to do with it, but he had something to do with the scouting trip which came later. You see, France and England each had obtained a strong foothold in this country; France, along the Great Lakes and Mississippi River; England, along the Atlantic Coast. Between the Mississippi and the coast stretched a beautiful and fertile country, the valley of the Ohio. When LaSalle made his explorations he took possession of the Mississippi in the name of the king of France. On that account France claimed to own all the land along the Mississippi and along all the rivers which flowed into the Mississippi. That took in a great part of the continent." "I don't see how because LaSalle stood on a rock and hollered out some words," Hank told him, "that made the whole country belong to France."