When I married my wife, she was an avid “rummager”. For those of you who might not be familiar with the term, she was a person who lived to go to rummage sales. Nothing thrilled her more than the hunt for bargains.

There is a book entitled The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman. I read the book in my younger days of idealism, and admittedly don’t remember a great deal about it. I would recommend it to you, Faithful Reader, as a Google search. The only thing I remember is that one of the ways a person shows their love for another is to give gifts.

That was obviously my wife’s chosen method. For a long while she never went to a rummage sale that she didn’t bring me back something—a tie, a shirt, and almost always some kind of trinket with which to decorate my home library. And my wife knows me well and has wonderful taste. I always liked what she brought me.

Being honest, for me the hardest part of marriage has been having to share living space with my wife’s accumulation of “stuff”. Being more honest, while I might resent my wife’s accumulation of her “stuff”, I have quite an impressive collection of my own “stuff”. Everything someone gives me becomes sentimental to me. Very few things that I have been given have I ever disposed of, especially as I have grown older, and the few I have thrown/given away I regret losing after the fact. If I had time and space, I would amaze you with some of the things that I have kept throughout the years. I still have Christmas gifts I received as a child.

There came a point, however, when I found myself drowning in the amount of my wife’s loving gifts. One day I said, “Stop! I don’t have room for anything else.” She replied, “Then get rid of some of it.” I explained I didn’t want to get rid of anything she’d given me, as the very fact she gave it to me made it valuable to me. I told her to just stop giving me new things.

Then she began returning from her days in the rummage sales and telling me what she would have bought me if I hadn’t asked her to stop. One was so painful. She had the opportunity to buy me a bell from a train for only $75! I told her she should not have let that slip by—I would gladly have given her back her $75, even more had she insisted. Of course the bell was gone when we went to check on it—there aren’t many people who know much about bells on trains who would have passed that up. Later, my wife saw a similar (the same?) bell on Internet for sale for $5,000! Then I had to educate my wife—don’t buy me anything else, unless you know for sure it’s something to die for. If in doubt, CALL ME! But most important of all, don’t tell me what you would have bought me. I’ll never miss what I never had, unless I know I could have had it!

I was less than impressed one day when my wife brought me a stack of books so old that it seemed they would crumble into dust if I merely looked at them. I asked her why she brought me that pile of trash. She said, “You like old books.” I replied, “Yes, dear, but I like old books I can actually read. These aren’t worth anything except to start a fire.” Well, she told me, it was no great loss—she only paid a dime each for them.

And I actually was about to throw the dilapidated old books into the trash, but something inside compelled me to at least examine just exactly what kind of old books they were.
When what to my wondering eyes did appear! I felt like a man who has found a magic lamp with a genie inside. I felt like I’d struck gold in the frozen Alaskan wilderness after eating my last bowl of cold beans. I felt I was holding the Hope Diamond in my hand. It is the very oldest item on this earth that I own.
I opened the much “worse for the wear” cover. The endpapers were gone, and the title page was readily evident:

The Life of George Washington

WITH

Curious Anecdotes,

Equally Honourable to Himself,

AND

Exemplary to His Young Countrymen,

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A life how useful to his country led!
How loved! while living!—how revered! now dead!
Lisp! lisp! his name, ye children yet unborn!
And with like deeds your own great names adorn.

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TWENTIETH EDITION . . . . Greatly improved.

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EMBELLISHED WITH EIGHT ENGRAVINGS.

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BY M. L. WEEMS,

FORMERLY RECTOR OF MOUNT VERNON PARISH.

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‘The Author has treated this great subject with admirable ‘success in a new way. He turns all the actions of Washing-
‘ton to the encouragement of virtue, by a careful application of
‘numerous exemplifications drawn from the conduct of the
‘founder of our republic from his earliest life.’
H. Lee, Major-General, Army U. S.

*************************
PHILADEPHIA:

PRINTED BY M. Carey & Son.
…………
1818.

Parson Mason Locke Weems originally published this biography of Washington in 1800 (Source: https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia… Retrieved November 9, 2020) in which he related the legendary story that as a youth the future first president chopped down a cherry tree. When questioned by his father, young Washington admitted his guilt. His father, in gratitude for the youth’s honesty, did not punish him.

There is a joke about a family who in olden days had an outhouse on the bank of a creek. The youngest son of the family had always had a strong urge to push the outhouse into the creek, and one Halloween night he yielded to temptation. The next morning the boy’s father asked if he had pushed the outhouse into the creek.

“Yes, Father,” the lad replied, emulating his hero Washington. The lad had obviously read Parson Weem’s biography of Washington for, as the father reached for his belt, the youngster began to plead, “But, Father, when George Washington chopped down the cherry tree he told his father the truth and wasn’t punished!”

The father replied, “Yes, but was George’s father in the cherry tree when it was chopped down?”

Reality is often far removed from actual historical events. This is particularly true of early American history, before the advent of technology and social media that now provide almost instantaneous social and political (mis)information. It can be determined from the flamboyance of the title page of his biography that Parson Weems was very possibly given to exaggeration. And possibly the exaggeration grew with each new edition of his epistle. The testimonial to the author publicized on the cover page of this “Twentieth Edition . . . . Greatly Improved” was provided by none other than Henry Lee (Source: https://books.google.com/books?id=SCjUGrFx5wMC&pg=PA65&lpg=PA65&dq=henr…). Henry Lee (aka Light-horse Harry Lee) was an American cavalry officer during the American Revolution and the father of Robert E. Lee. Henry Lee wrote the resolution passed by Congress when Washington died that contained the famous words “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen” (Source: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henry-Lee, Retrieved November 10, 2020).

Modern historians have determined that Parson Weems probably made up the story about Washington and the cherry tree. In so doing, he mythicized the already immortal Washington. Washington was already a larger than life legend due to the extraordinary role he played in the founding of our great nation and his leadership as its first president.
One young man who was heavily influenced by the morals depicted in Weem’s tome on Washington was later to become president himself—Abraham Lincoln (Source: https://www.bushcenter.org/catalyst/leadership/what-lincoln-learned-fro… Retrieved November 10, 2020). What a fitting tribute to the influence of George Washington’s life and Parson Weem’s depiction Lincoln’s rise to the presidency was. Washington was heralded as “The Father of Our Country”, while Lincoln would become known as its savior.

There has been much controversy surrounding the true events versus the extraordinary feats of both Washington’s and Lincoln’s lives. Weem’s biography raised Washington to epic proportions, while Lincoln’s assassination legendarily put him in comparison with Jesus himself. As Christ died on what is now celebrated as Good Friday, Lincoln was assassinated on Good Friday, 1865. As the Savior was crucified after giving His life to save the world from sin, Lincoln’s life was taken after he had sacrificed himself for the preservation of the Union. Though both Christ and Lincoln are worshipped, reverenced and defended as victorious martyrs, there are those who don’t profess Christ and who think Lincoln was a racist tyrant. It is indeed rare to hear anything negative at all about George Washington.

Even a contemporary of Lincoln saw a need to counteract the myths perpetrated about the sixteenth president. William H. Herndon, Lincoln’s last law partner, indicated in the preface of his biography of Lincoln that he wrote his book to portray the real Lincoln, not the myth held by the public…” (Source: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/38483/38483-h/38483-h.htm, Retrieved November 10, 2020). Published in 1888, it caused great controversy, in particular for Mary Todd Lincoln, who was most offended that Herndon alleged that Lincoln’s only true love was Ann Rutledge (Source: http://abelincolnhistory.com/family/mary-todd-lincoln.htm Retrieved November 10, 2020).

The cherry tree story rivals the story of Lincoln borrowing a copy of Parson Weem’s book. The book became rain soaked while in Lincoln’s possession, and Lincoln worked for several days to pay the cost of the damaged book (Source: https://msa.maryland.gov/msa/educ/speeches/html/lincoln021502.html Retrieved November 10, 2020). Lincoln is also said to have walked a great distance to return pennies he had overcharged someone in his days as a store clerk (Source: https://greatamericanhistory.net/honesty.htm Retrieved November 10, 2020).

When it comes to the study of history, how much is fact, bias, overstated or unrevealed? The same question could be asked of the modern media. As was said of how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll® Pop, “The world may never know”.

Faithful Reader, I leave you with excerpts from a copied Facebook post that has made the rounds during the past few days. I’m not saying that I believe or agree with everything in the post (this is presented for thought, not controversy), but I will be most interested in the gasoline prices—personally, I paid $1.58 per gallon at the Weigel’s on Washington Pike two nights ago, and I can verify that as a fact.

I want to check back on this a few years later . . .
Today is two days after the 2020 election. Gasoline is currently $1.80-2.10 per gallon. Interest rates are 2.65% for a 30 year mortgage. The stock market closed at 27,848, even though we have been fighting COVID for 9 months. Our GDP growth for the 3rd Qtr was 33%. We had the best economy ever until COVID and it is recovering well. We have not had any new wars or conflicts in the last 4 years. North Korea has been under control and has not been testing any missiles. Isis has not been heard from for over 3 years. The housing market is the strongest in over 20 years. Homes have appreciated at an unbelievable rate and sell within hours of going on the market, with multiple offers . . .