he served.

"Ah, but he was a rich man," cries the carping critic; "he could afford
to do it." How many rich men to-day avail themselves of their
opportunity to indulge in this kind of extravagance, toiling
tremendously without a salary, neglecting their own estate for the
public benefit, seeing their property diminished without complaint, and
coming into serious financial embarrassment, even within sight of
bankruptcy, as Washington did, merely for the gratification of a desire
to serve the people? This is indeed a very singular and noble form of
luxury. But the wealth which makes it possible neither accounts for its
existence nor detracts from its glory. It is the fruit of a manhood
superior alike to riches and to poverty, willing to risk all, and to use
all, for the common good.

Was it in any sense a misfortune for the people of America, even the
poorest among them, that there was a man able to advance sixty-four
thousand dollars out of his own purse, with no other security but his
own faith in their cause, to pay his daily expenses while he was leading
their armies? This unsecured loan was one of the very things, I doubt
not, that helped to inspire general confidence. Even so the prophet
Jeremiah purchased a field in Anathoth, in the days when Judah was
captive unto Babylon, paying down the money, seventeen shekels of
silver, as a token of his faith that the land would some day be
delivered from the enemy and restored to peaceful and orderly
habitation.

Washington's substantial pledge of property to the cause of liberty was
repaid by a grateful country at the close of the war. But not a dollar
of payment for the tremendous toil of body and mind, not a dollar for