I was able to find Frank Grizzard's GW piece through a google news
search. Wonderful work, as one would expect from Frank; but I will
toss one friendly water balloon at him over his assertion that the "I
cannot tell a lie" cherry-tree story is itself "a lie."  Everyone says
that, of course, but the interesting thing is that there is a similar
story in GWP Custis's "Recollections" of Washington, with a quote from
GW's mother "I rejoice in my son, who always speaks the truth." Custis
knew George Washington intimately.  In editing the GW biography by
Parson Weems, who supposedly fabricated the story, Marcus Cunliffe
devoted several pages of his introduction to a careful, scholarly
assessment of the cherry-tree story and concluded that it should NOT
be dismissed as a fake, that it was perfectly plausible, and that what
made people dislike it so much was that Weems had unctuously moralized
over it.

Henry Wiencek

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