Word: parsons
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...Parson Weems Again...
Sirs: Was it not Parson Weems (TIME, Oct. 2) who invented or at least popularized the equally famous lie about Washington saying his prayers in a snowdrift...
...legend-it was Parson Weems. Wrote he: "In the winter of '77, while Washington, with the American Army, lay encamped at Valley Forge, a certain good old Friend, of the respectable family and name of Potts, if I mistake not, had occasion to pass through the woods near headquarters. . . . As he approached the spot with a cautious step, whom should he behold in a dark natural bower of ancient oaks, but the commander in chief of the American Armies on his knees in prayer...
...Parson Weems sold his books at fairs, races, sittings of county courts from New York to Georgia-between times "beating up the headquarters of all the good old planters and farmers . . . regardless of roads horrid and suns torrid." He sold Paradise Lost, The Vicar of Wakefield, Robinson Crusoe, Cook's Voyages, the works of Voltaire, Tom Paine and Bunyan and Bard's Compendium of Midwifery, which he touted as "the grand American Aristotle...
...also sold his own productions, which were bestsellers. Parson Weems wrote them at odd moments along the road-biographies of Washington, of Franklin, of Penn and-his best book-of General Francis Marion, the "little, smoke-dried, French-phizzed" Swamp Fox. They abounded in doubtful anecdotes, unblushing fabrications and factual errors, but they were also buoyant, impulsive, racy and full of the spirit of their subjects. After Washington's death Parson Weems wrote to his publisher: "Washington, you know, is gone! Millions are gaping to read something about him. I am nearly primed and cocked...