Page:Mount Vernon, Washington's home and the nation's shrine (IA mountvernonwashi00wils).pdf/25



To Dr. Johnson has been attributed the epigram, "The most difficult thing in the world, sir, is to get possession of a fact"; and to few perhaps does his come home with more force than to those who undertake to extract the truth from the traditions and glamour of romance that have grown around so much of the life and customs of Colonial America. The gratification, perhaps the pride, engendered by the accounts that have come down to us of the imposing dignity of the lives of our Colonial ancestors and the elegance of their homes has sometimes received a rude shock as we have gazed for the first time on the "Mansions" in which they lived; and while, on the one hand, this is true; on the other, it is equally true that some of those old worthies whose names are scarce remembered, and who may perhaps "have sealed their letters with their thumbs," are shown by careful research to have possessed homes as stately as any, and to have contributed as prodigally to Virginia's reputation for hospitality and heroism as did those whose names have gone sounding down the ages; and as it is the task of the faithful historian to make "history as written accord with history as performed," so in the field he has chosen to occupy, this is what Mr. Wilstach has endeavored to accomplish, and I believe he has achieved it.

Much of what, in the past, bas been said and written