THE CHERRY TREE AND LITTLE HATCHET Whether the immortal cherry tree grew at this home on the Potomac, or on the farm on the Rappahannock to which the family moved, we are not instructed by the imaginings of "Parson Weems," Washington Irving, and others; but the hatchet, if the cherry tree grew in Westmoreland, must have been a very "little hatchet," indeed, for Augustine Washington removed to a seat opposite Fredericksburg when George was a small boy. And just here the writer begs leave to enter a plea for the life of this cherry tree! Irreverent biographers sneer at it as "a myth." We have sacrificed much to truth. We have wiped from our canvas all the "gay gallants" of Williamsburg, the love-lorn wandering curate, "Sister Susie," the life in England, the charming portrait! Really, we cannot give up our cherry tree! It is deeply rooted. It has flourished more than one hundred and fifty years. Its lessons and its fruits are the crowning glory of the board on the twenty-second day of February. We positively decline to bury the little hatchet or uproot the cherry tree! [Illustration: Pohick Church, Mount Vernon, Virginia.] "Parson Weems," who first told the story of the little hatchet, was an Episcopal clergyman well known to General Washington. His "Life of Washington" appeared several years before the great man's death. "It was read by him and mildly commended," says one writer. Certainly it was never contradicted. Parson Weems was an eccentric character, but so kind and charitable that his "oriental imagination" was indulgently condoned by his neighbors. He claimed to have been rector of Pohick church which was attended by General Washington. Not even this was contradicted at the time, and is given the benefit of a doubt by the accurate old Bishop Meade himself. He loved to make people happy. He would preach to the poor negroes and then fiddle for them to dance. He probably believed with George Herbert that:-- "A verse may find him who a sermon flies And turn delight into a sacrifice." He was a charming historian. If there were no interesting facts to mitigate the dryness of a narrative, why then, of course, something must be invented! So "his books have been read," says Bishop Meade, "by more persons than those of Marshall, Ramsey, Bancroft and Irving put together." Evidently the good bishop at heart liked him. He thought him probably "too good for banning, too bad for blessing," but he admired, nevertheless, "the pathos and elegance of his writings." Now, if General Washington did not stamp the cherry-tree story as a falsehood, and if Bishop Meade does not contradict it, we may leave it, as they did, to flower and fruit for the teaching of American children.