Excerpt from The Model Man: An Oration on Washington, in Which He Is Compared With the Sages and Heroes of Antiquity, Together With an Analysis of His Character, and the Annunciation of Him as the Model Man

The purpose of the author of the following Oration, is to hold up the character of Washington to the gaze of mankind as worthy of imitation. This is no original idea. Do we not know that the habitual contemplation of an admirable object makes a lasting and salutary impression on the mind? To be like Washington should be the desire and study of every American, and of every man. He is our ideal man. The qualities of his great soul render his fame enduring, and constitute the glory of human character, and the habitual contemplation of him, will tend to elevate and ennoble mankind.

There would seem to be little need of cultivating a love and veneration of this great man, since his name is on every tongue, and his fame is as broad as the earth, but the sun is often obscured by mist, and sometimes by dark clouds and tempests. What with the mysticism of our theologies, the dark clouds of superstition, and the raging storm of partisanism and sectional strife, there seems of late somewhat of a declension in public as well as individual patriotism, and a subsidence of our zeal for justice, freedom and equality. There is a worship of strange and false gods going on among us. The worship of them is inadequate to our wants as freemen. Mammon is one of these, and lo, his myriad slaves! Another is an ideal tyrant.

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