The work was nearly done when some movement of his drew my attention to the cobbler. I had been struck by his appearance, and now my interest deepened. Away from his bench it would not have occurred to one to assign him to that calling. He was an old man, whose muscular figure had acquired a stoop at the shoulders like that of some seasoned scholar. His features were clean-cut and strong. His blue eyes had a look of much shrewdness and force. There were deep lines about his mouth and in his forehead, which spoke of masterful conflict in life. Meeting him in the dress of a gentleman, you would have said that he was a public man of some distinction, and with close acquaintance with affairs. In reality, he had sat for fifty years upon that bench. He was growing communicative now; and from his personal history I tried to divert him to his views of life, thinking that I must have found a philosopher in a man whose opportunities for reflection had been so great. But his talk was flowing freely, and would take its own course, careless of my promptings. I settled myself to listen, and my interested attention seemed to fire him with new zest. From personal narrative it was an easy step to events of our national history, and he warmed to these under the inspiration of the life of some great man connected with each. General Scott was his first hero; and touching upon details of his history, which were wholly unknown to me, he pictured the inborn, warlike spirit of the man with amazing appreciation, and finally quoted the judgment of the Duke of Wellington, who, he said, had declared of Scott that, "as a general, he stood without a superior." Here he paused for a moment to explain that the Duke of Wellington was a personage of exceptional military experience, whose judgments in such matters were entitled to the highest respect. The Civil War and Mr. Lincoln as the chief figure of those troublous times next inspired him. It was with no mean insight into the issues involved that he glowed with the thought of a constitutional question grown to sharp national conflict, and settled at infinite cost, and transmitted as a most sacred trust, to be guarded with eternal vigilance. But the climax was reached when he turned back on his course, and began afresh, with the Father of his Country as his theme. The incident of the cherry-tree was repeated with sublime faith, and with highly dramatic effect. Encouraged by his success and my absorbed attention, he next recounted the events of that fateful June morning when the allied American and British forces were nearing Fort Duquesne. With keenest appreciation of the fatal irony of it, he repeated again and again his own version of the reply made to the warning of young Washington by General Braddock: "You young buckskin! you teach a British officer how to fight?"