However, Washington was treated "with the greatest Complaisance" by Joncaire. During the evening the Frenchmen "dosed themselves pretty plentifully," wrote the sober, keen-eyed Virginian, "and gave a License to their Tongues. They told me, That it was their absolute Design to take Possession of the _Ohio_, and by G-- they would do it: For that although they were sensible the _English_ could raise two Men for their one; yet they knew, their Motions were too slow and dilatory to prevent any Undertaking of theirs." For a true picture of this Washington (who is said to be forgotten) what one would be chosen before this: a youth from Virginia sitting before the log fire in a German's cabin from which the French had driven its owner, on the Allegheny river; about him are sitting leering, tipsy Gauls, bragging with oaths of a conquest they were never to make: he is dressed for a five-hundred-mile ride through a wilderness in winter, and his sober eyes rest thoughtfully upon the crackling logs while the oaths and boasts and smell of foreign liquor fill the hot and heavy air. No picture could show better the three commanding traits of this youth who was father of the man: hearty daring, significant homespun shrewdness, dogged, resourceful patience. Basic traits of character are often displayed involuntarily in the effervescence of youthful zest. These this lad had shown and was showing in this brave ride into a dense wilderness and a braver inspection of his country's enemies, their works, their temper, and their boasts. Let this picture hang on the walls of every home where the lad in the foreground before the blazing logs is unknown save in the rôle of the general or statesman he became in later life. How these French officers looked this tall, stern boy up and down! How they enjoyed sneering to his face at English backwardness in crossing the Alleghanies into the great West which their own explorers had honeycombed with a hundred swift canoes! As they even plotted his assassination, how, in turn, that young heart must have burned to stop their mouths with a clenched hand. Little wonder that when the time came, his voice first ordered "Fire!" and his finger first pulled the trigger in the great war which won the West from France!