LIFE MASK BY HOUDON Taken by Houdon in October, 1785. From the replica in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. TITLE-PAGE OF JOURNAL OF GEORGE WASHINGTON, 1754 Of this first edition but two copies are known. From the original in the Lenox Library. PRESIDENTIAL HOUSE IN PHILADELPHIA Philadelphia offered to furnish the house for the President during the time Congress sat in that city, but Washington “wholly declined living in any public building,” and rented this house from Robert Morris. Though it was considered one of the finest in the city, Washington several times complained of being cramped. [Illustration: SHARPLESS MINIATURE OF WASHINGTON, 1795] Note In every country boasting a history there may be observed a tendency to make its leaders or great men superhuman. Whether we turn to the legends of the East, the folk-lore of Europe, or the traditions of the native races of America, we find a mythology based upon the acts of man gifted with superhuman powers. In the unscientific, primeval periods in which these beliefs were born and elaborated into oral and written form, their origin is not surprising. But to all who have studied the creation of a mythology, no phase is a more curious one than that the keen, practical American of to-day should engage in the same process of hero-building which has given us Jupiter, Wotan, King Arthur, and others. By a slow evolution we have well-nigh discarded from the lives of our greatest men of the past all human faults and feelings; have enclosed their greatness in glass of the clearest crystal, and hung up a sign, “Do not touch.” Indeed, with such characters as Washington, Franklin, and Lincoln we have practically adopted the English maxim that “the king can do no wrong.” In place of men, limited by human limits, and influenced by human passions, we have demi-gods, so stripped of human characteristics as to make us question even whether they deserve much credit for their sacrifices and deeds. But with this process of canonization have we not lost more than we have gained, both in example and in interest? Many, no doubt, with the greatest veneration for our first citizen, have sympathized with the view expressed by Mark Twain, when he said that he was a greater man than Washington, for the latter “couldn’t tell a lie, while he could, but wouldn’t” We have endless biographies of Franklin, picturing him in all the public stations of life, but all together they do not equal in popularity his own human autobiography, in which we see him walking down Market Street with a roll under each arm, and devouring a third. And so it seems as if the time had come to put the shadow-boxes of humanity round our historic portraits, not because they are ornamental in themselves, but because they will make them examples, not mere idols.