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Show The Fleet Did Not Forget THAT WAS a superb home-coming of the fleet on Monday last. They were all in perfect form and when the thousands of tens of thousands of their countrymen shouted their welcomes, wel-comes, in solemn majesty their great guns returned re-turned the welcomes as though the thrill of tho home coming had infected those steel war engines and given a new splendor to their "all halls!" But one incident of the day has not been enough dwelt upon. When the guns were roaring, bands playing; when the flags were being dipped and the acclaims of thousands of voices were rending the air, suddenly as the noon hour struck, for a moment silence fell, then out of the hush, from every one of the great ships came the solemn salute of twenty-one guns to the memory of the first great president. What an answer to his words: "In time of peace prepare for war." Each gun answered affirming its preparedness; each ship was an object lesson to show that, at least In part, his words had been heeded, and that the Great Republic Is alert and stronger than ever before; that a reverence deeper than ever goes out to the fla.g whose first baptism under a battle canopy was carried by him. i For a hundred and ten years the dust of him, I H who In life was George Washington, has been j H resting In the simple sarcophagus at Mount Ver- nil non, but never a vessel' passes up or down the Potomac that its bell is not tolled when passing II that spot, and on Monday last when the festivities HI were at their height In the lower Chesapeake HI bay; all were stopped to follow the rule which 1 is the rule of all American warships, that the president's twenty-one guns might be fired from I H each vessel and the flags dipped in honor of tho H natal day of the father of his country. We know of nothing just like that in history. The char- H acter of a man grown so strong, as it is studied, that after he has been asleep in the grave for a hundred and ten years; a matchless, exultant j M fleet, while receiving the welcomes of thousands, M suddenly, when the noon hour strikes, remem- fl bers that the day is the anniversary of the birth lfl of its first Commander in Chief, and pr '' " 'n its celebration, opens all its solemn guns an s its flags to the immortal memory. iM It is a lesson for every American boy; every American boy should, so soon as possible, go to JA Mount Vernon to learn, while looking at the sim- ' pie sepulchre there, that it is possible for every M earnest American boy to earn for himself immor- M tality, if ho but possesses the brain, the heart, M the courage, the integrity and patriotism, to win M |