" In old age he loved to have the young
and gay about him. He could break into furious oaths and no one
was a better master of what we may call honorable guile in
dealing with wily savages, in circulating falsehoods that would
deceive the enemy in time of war, or in pursuing a business
advantage. He played cards for money and carefully entered loss
and gain in his accounts. He loved horseracing and horses, and
nothing pleased him more than to talk of that noble animal. He
kept hounds and until his burden of cares became too great was an
eager devotee of hunting. His shooting was of a type more heroic
than that of an English squire spending a day on a moor with
guests and gamekeepers and returning to comfort in the evening.
Washington went off on expeditions into the forest lasting many
days and shared the life in the woods of rough men, sleeping
often in the open air. "Happy," he wrote, "is he who gets the
berth nearest the fire." He could spend a happy day in admiring
the trees and the richness of the land on a neighbor's estate.
Always his thoughts were turning to the soil. There was poetry
in him. It was said of Napoleon that the one approach to poetry
in all his writings is the phrase: "The spring is at last
appearing and the leaves are beginning to sprout.
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