The distinguished hero of Yorktown and the first President of our Republic little dreamed that the good Scotch nurse led by the hand that morning one destined to laurel his own history, to depict the great deeds of the Revolutionary struggle and to transmit, as it were, by personal touch, a work which in reverent love and sympathetic narration would stand alone, not only in American literature, but also in the annals of the world's history of freedom.