They call him Caesar, because he does not smirk and grin, and slap every country Tom and Jerry on the back. And yet, beneath that cold exterior, there is a nature which can be as warm and as tender as Spring. Once or twice during the evening he laughed as heartily as any one. I am convinced that the reserve and apparent exclusiveness, which seems so offensive to some, is partly a natural dignity, a respect for his position, and partly a disposition which he cannot help. But there is a quality about him which only the most superficial observer can fail to notice. The sense of it grew upon me as I sat there and watched the play of his features in the firelight. Dorothy, he is a great man, the greatest, perhaps, that our country will ever see. He is cast in the heroic mold. He belongs in the company of the elect of all the ages. Only once in centuries does Nature form such a man, and then, like Caesar and Cromwell, he must be misunderstood, because he walks in a different atmosphere from the common throng. When I was in college I went on a hunting trip in the New Hampshire wilderness. Away up there in the Northland, suddenly, from a hilltop, I saw that splendid mountain peak, which has just been rightly named Washington. Gloriously, above its fellows, it soared into the sunset sky, remote, inaccessible, companion of the stars, yet rooted in mother earth, with running stream and birds and flowers about its base. That is our Washington, and such he must ever be. Once he alluded to the slanders and vituperations, which cannot but annoy him. He spoke in a voice which had more of sadness than anger in it. “These attacks,” he said, “are outrages on common decency. But I have a consolation within that no earthly effort can deprive me of, and that is, that neither ambition nor interested motives have influenced my conduct. The arrows of malevolence, therefore, however barbed and well pointed, can never reach the most vulnerable part of me, though while I am up as a mark they will be continually aimed.” The truth is, Dorothy, his public life is one continual martyrdom and self-sacrifice. He does not care for public life. He loves his farm on the Potomac—his horses and his dogs, his tobacco and his wheat, and he would be happier there than in any office which the people can give him. This talk about his being unrepublican is absurd. No man could be more ardently republican. He went into the war from pure sentiment and love of the country. He would have fought in the ranks, if his place had not been in the saddle. He believes, as every man must, in a strong central government, but monarchial institutions he abhors.