Many persons have felt the sense of fatigue which the Athenians expressed practically by their oyster shells, and have been led to cast doubts on Washington's perfection as the only consolation for their own sense of injury.
Lodge uses a metaphor to illustrate how people's doubts about Washington's perfection often stem from their own feelings of inadequacy.
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He was also--and this is very revealing and explanatory, too, of his vast popularity--a man of ideals.
The blood of some ancestral Scotch covenanter or of some Dutch reformed preacher facing the tyranny of Philip of Spain was in his veins, and with his large opportunities and his vast audiences he was always ready to appeal for justice and…
He was unfailingly attractive, because he was always perfectly natural and his own unconscious self.
His country asked the sacrifice and he gave it with solemn pride and uncomplaining lips.