But was this all? Is it quite true that Washington had only a love of
boisterous fun, and nothing else? It is worth looking a little deeper
than the current stories of the camp to find out, and yet one of these
very camp-stories raises at once a strong suspicion that Mr. Parton's
conclusion in this regard, like so many conclusions about Washington,
is unfounded. When General Lee took the oath of allegiance to the
United States, he remarked, in making abjuration of his former
allegiance, that he was perfectly ready to abjure the king, but could
not bring himself to abjure the Prince of Wales, at which bit of irony
Washington was greatly amused. The wit of the remark is a little cold
to-day, but at the moment, accompanying as it did a solemn act of
abjuration, it was keen enough. Washington himself, moreover, was
perfectly capable of good-natured banter. Colonel Humphreys challenged
him one day to jump over a hedge. Washington, always ready to accept
a challenge where riding was concerned, told the colonel to go on.
Humphreys put his horse at the hedge, cleared it, and landed in
a quagmire on the other side up to his horse's girths; whereupon
Washington rode up, stopped, and looking blandly at his struggling
friend, remarked, "Ah, colonel, you are too deep for me." "Take care,"
he wrote to young Custis, when he sent him money for his college gown,
"not to buy without advice; otherwise you may be more distinguished by
your folly than your dress.
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