an extra rocking-chair from the district quartermaster, rests on his shoulders, and he bears it all with a smile.
He watches and cares for his men as a trainer cares for his athletes, he has coached and drilled them till the forty thousand move together with the smooth team-play of a champion team; and he has breathed into the whole great organization the fighting spirit of its captain. He has proved himself a born fighter and leader of men, not by the number of lives he has taken—for he has never been to war—but by the battles he has won against the desert and the jungle. He has not worn his uniform since he came to Panama. But in spite of snow-white hair and civilian clothes, and more than thirty years' absence from the parade-ground, General Goethals is no shapeless, desk-chair warrior, but a man to inspire the words of Bret Harte's priest:
'Now, by the firm grip of the hand on the bridle,
By the straight line from the heel to the shoulder,
By the curt speech,—nay, nay, no offense, son,—
You are a soldier.
President Lowell, of Harvard University, in conferring on General Goethals the honorary degree of doctor of laws, spoke of him as follows:
"George Washington Goethals, a soldier who has set a standard for the conduct of civic works; an administrator who has maintained security and order among a multitude of workmen in the tropics; an engineer who is completing the vast design of uniting two oceans through a peak in Darien."
