“What did he do?” repeated Jimmy. “Why, I know that just as easy!”
Then, after a long pause,—
“Well, anyway he had a hatchet. No, no,” seeing an amused look on Mr. Sanford’s face; “’twas when he was little that he had the hatchet! But afterwards he was—was he the president?”
“Yes; our first president.”
Then Mr. Sanford told as simply as possible what the good man did for us more than a hundred years ago to make us a free nation.
Jimmy listened carefully, and understood a little of it. He was glad to learn that we are free.
“I like to be free,” said he, swinging his arms and throwing out his chest. “I like to have a president ruling over me! Not a queen, you know, away off in England! That would be awful! Why, we should have to sail to England in a ship every time we wanted to ask the queen a question!”
“But here is little Lucy,” said Mr. Sanford, “who looks as if she cares very little about kings and queens. Perhaps she would like to hear the story of the hatchet.”
Then he took her on his knee, and told her how the little George Washington long, long ago had the present of a hatchet, and enjoyed swinging it so well that he cut down a small cherry-tree before he stopped to think.