“With a smile whose expression of benevolence I have rarely seen equalled, he offered his hand and replied: ‘An odd sort of introduction, Mr. Bernard; but I am pleased to find you can play so active a part in private without a prompter.’” In the conversation that ensued over the refreshments at Mount Vernon, Mr. Bernard studied his distinguished host with deep earnestness, and has left us a vivid picture in description as the actor saw him. He says that in the conversation Washington’s face did not present much variety of expression. It wore always a look of profound thoughtfulness. Neither was there much change in the tones of his voice, but its intonations were rich with the depths of expression. The keynote of his talk seemed to be summed up, as the actor believed, in one of the sentences of this conversation: “I am a man, and interested in all that concerns humanity.” This is in truth the keynote of any mind that ever achieves anything worth while. One does for self or party or nation only as it is for humanity. Any other deed or thought is not patriotism but partisanship. America is that manhood interested with all its available means in the humanity of the world. Mr. Bernard, with what seems to be the deep insight that a great actor must have into character and human nature, says, “He spoke like a man who had felt as much as he had reflected, and reflected more than he had spoken; like one who had looked upon society rather in the mass than in detail, and who regarded the happiness of America but as the first link in a series of universal victories.” This vision, opened up to America in the devastations of the Great European War for “a place in the sun,” was enlarged by American patriots, not for any closed-in nation, but for the rights of humanity. It chanced, during the conversation, that, while Washington was comparing English liberty as surrounded by walls, with American liberty as in the open, a black man came in with a jug of spring water. Washington saw the actor look at the slave and smile with an inward thought. He quickly guessed at the thought and responded, “When we profess, as our fundamental principle, that liberty is the inalienable right of every man, we do not include madmen or idiots; liberty in their hands would become a scourge. Till the mind of the slave has been educated to perceive what are the obligations of a state of freedom, and not confound a man’s freedom with a brute’s, the gift would insure its abuse.” He expressed his belief that slavery must some time be banished for the unity of American principles, and, in this connection, it should be remembered that, by will, he freed all his own slaves, to take place at the death of his wife. CHAPTER XVI STANDARDS OF AMERICAN PATRIOTISM I. FOUNDATIONS