HOW TO GET STRONG
the South. But his qualities were so faultlessly proportioned that his countrymen felt that he was the best type of America; and rejoiced in it; and were proud of it."
The Rector of his parish, Rev. M. L. Weems, says: "Lord Fairfax readily engaged George as a surveyor, and sent him into the backwoods to work. He continued in his lordship's service till his twentieth year, closely pursuing the laborious life of a woodsman. In Frederick he boarded in the house of the widow Stevenson, generally pronounced Stinson. This lady had seven sons—William and Valentine Crawford by her first husband; and John, and Hugh, and Dick, and Jim, and Mark Stinson by her last husband. These seven young men, in Herculean size and strength, were equal perhaps to any seven sons of any one mother in Christendom. This was a family exactly to George's mind, because promising him abundance of that manly exercise in which he delighted. Upon the fine extended green, several hundred yards long, in front of the house, every evening when his daily toils of surveying were ended, George—like a young Greek training for the Olympic Games—used to turn out with his sturdy young companions 'to see,' as they termed it, 'which was the best man' at running, jumping, and wrestling; and so keen was their passion for these sports, and so great their ambition to outdo one another, that they would often keep them up, especially on moonshiny nights, till bedtime.
"The Crawfords and Stinsons, though not taller than George, were much heavier men, so that at wrestling, and particularly the close or Indian hug, he seldom gained much matter of triumph. But in all trials of agility they stood no chance with him."
George Washington Parke Custis, Martha Washington's son, who lived with him, must have known him intimately. He says: "The last time he weighed was in the summer of 1799, the year of his death, when, having made the tour of his farm accompanied by an English gentleman, he called at his mill and was weighed. The writer placed the weight in the scales. The Englishman, not so tall, but stout, square-built, and fleshy, weighed heavily; and expressed much surprise that the General had not outweighed him; when Washington observed that the best weight of his best days never exceeded from two hundred and ten to two hundred and twenty pounds. In the instance alluded to he weighed a little rising two hundred and ten pounds.
"Of the portraits of Washington, the most of them give to his446
