Page:Bierce - Collected Works - Volume 09.djvu/56

52 but once illustrious co-workers in council and camp, and in no way comparable with Hamilton. He towers above his fellows because he stands upon a pile of books.

The supreme indignity to the memory of this really worthy man has been performed by the Sunday-scholiasts, the pietaries, the truly good, the example-to-American-youth folk. These canting creatures have managed to nake him of his last remaining rag of flesh and drain out his ultimate red corpuscle of human blood. In order that he may be acceptable to themselves they have made him a bore to everyone else. To give him value as an "example" to the unripe intelligences of their following they have whitewashed him an inch thick, draped him, fig-leafed him and gilded him out of all semblance to man. To prepare his character for the juvenile moral tooth they have boned it, and to make it digestible to the juvenile moral paunch, unsalted it by maceration in the milk-and-water of their own minds. And so we have him today. In a single century the great-hearted gentleman of history has become the good boy of literature — the public prig. Washing- ton is the capon of our barnyard Pantheon — revised and edited for the table.