HOW TO GET STRONG
April 30, 1789; at the next election he desired to retire, but yielded to urgent general solicitation; in 1796 he positively declined a third term, and returned to Mount Vernon, to the quiet of home-life, where he died, December 14, 1799, of acute laryngitis, his last words being, 'I die hard, but am not afraid to go.'"
"Mr. Depew says that Mr. Gladstone told him: 'Sixty years ago I read Chief Justice Marshall's life of Washington, and I was forced to the conclusion that he was quite the greatest man that ever lived. The sixty years that have passed have not changed that impression; and to any Englishman who seeks my advice in the line of his development and equipment, I invariably say, "Begin by reading the life of George Washington"'"—New York Tribune, February 15, 1895.
Of whom Charles James Fox, in the British House of Commons, when Lord North was doing all he could to keep us from being free, rose and said of Washington: "He derives honor less from the splendor of the situation than from the dignity of his mind; before whom all borrowed plumage sinks into insignificance, and all the potentates of England seem little and contemptible."
To whom Thomas Erskine—the greatest forensic orator England ever saw—wrote in 1796: "I have a large acquaintance among the most valued and exalted classes of mankind. You, sir, are the only human being for whom I ever felt an awful reverence. I sincerely pray God that He may grant a long and serene evening to your life, which has been so gloriously devoted to the universal happiness of the world."
Here is the estimate of one who knew him intimately: "Perhaps the strongest feature in his character was prudence, never acting until every circumstance, every consideration, was maturely weighed; refraining if he saw a doubt, but, when once decided, going through with his purpose, whatever obstacles opposed. His integrity was most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known, no motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to bias his decision. He was, indeed, in every sense of the words, a wise, a good, and a great man."—Thomas Jefferson.
The Expounder of the Constitution tells us how he regarded this great man: "That name was of power to rally a nation in the hour of thick-thronging public disasters and calamities; that name444
