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it is, that Washington's esteem and devotion to his wife were made manifest in ways both great and small ever thereafter. Does he not at the zenith of his fame write to her, "I should enjoy more real happiness in one month with you at home than I have the most distant prospect of finding abroad if my stay were to be seven times seven years"?

In such companionship, surrounded by the dear friends of his boyhood, with health and ample means at his command, Washington passed the serene years preluding a crisis which was to call him into the broadest arena of patriotic action. We may glance here at Mount Vernon as it appeared to the numerous visitors who, including all the potentates of the colony, made continual test of the hospitality of the newly married pair. The house, as altered and improved by Washington, was an unpretending Virginia dwelling, modest enough by comparison with the stately homes At some little disof England's great men. tance from the carriage-way facing the western front, the road led through a bit of blossoming woodland, in spring redolent of the odors of wild grape, and blazing with the luster of dogwood, wild azalea and lupine. Thence, the visitor's chariot, or oftener his

saddle-horse, passed between porters' lodges
built of sun-dried bricks to the portal now
familiar to thousands in our land. This ap-
proach gave to view a plain two-story house,
with peaked roof and cupola, and out-build-
ings connected with the main structure, after
the common Virginia fashion, by an open ar-
cade. (The uses of such covered walks re-
quire no explanations to a Southerner, who
recalls the many hospitable mansions where
from the kitchens situated at a distance from
the dwelling a procession of little darkies like
an antique frieze was seen to pass and re-
pass, supporting plates of hot batter-cakes,
muffins, Sally Lunns, rice waffles, griddle-cakes,
love-puffs, beaten biscuit, laplands,- what was
there not beside?-in bewildering succession
to the tea-table!) The only imposing feature
of Mount Vernon architecture was the colon-
nade, a broad flagged piazza upon the river-
front, supporting by slender columns the pro-
jecting roof of the house, and forming a pleas-
ant airy retreat from the ardor of the Southern
sun. From this point the lawn slopes down to
the wooded heights above the landing-place.
Here would the guests assemble before din-
To the ladies were
ner was announced.
served, by way of an appetizer, trays contain-
ing a variety of small choice pickles, made
after a famous old receipt. To the gentle-
men, the butler handed straw-stemmed glasses
of Madeira, imported twice a year with the
rest of the household stuff, from London.
On this piazza the family commonly sat, Mrs.
Washington with her knitting, the others va-
riously occupied, and here the great man
walked to and fro, pondering in his maturity
over the mighty questions then fomenting be-
tween the British ministry and the colonists,
as he had in his boyhood strained at the leash
that kept him from the frontier war.

An enduring beauty of Mount Vernon were the gardens. Their limits were crowded with old-time flowers growing between hedges of tall box. Calycanthus and althea, snow-ball and mock-orange, were found in the shrubbery; while sago-palm and century plant, lemon-tree and agave, were brought from the glass houses to add dignity to the walks. Washington put into the petty cares for flower and plant the same nicety of judgment and the same zeal that went into affairs of state or camp. He found as much time to bestow upon graft and seedling as upon the larger industries of the plantation.

In the matter of daily occupation a page from Washington's home-life reads pretty much like that of any other Virginia planter of his day. The industries of the servants' quarter embraced every trade necessary to supply their own wants. Not content with

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in helping Peter, his smith, to make a new plow of his own invention. One Sunday, unable to go to church because the chariot has not returned from Colonel Fairfax's, he is obliged to put to rout a saucy oysterman who "lies at his landing," and "plagues" him by "disorderly behavior." He conditions for a purchase of land from a miserly neighbor; and himself goes into Alexandria to select a keg of butter, "being entirely out of that article." He bottles "thirty-five dozen of cider," and notes a very "great circle around the moon." When the spring-tides of the Potomac bring herring to their nets, he is with the men, helping to haul in the seine. Whenever the season permits, he hunts with Lord Fairfax, George William Fairfax, Mr. Alexander, and others. Horses, hounds, horns made the Mount Vernon woods resound, and after a day of sport the rough-riding squires put in for dinner at any one of their respective residences which might be most convenient. When the weather is so bad as to keep even the stalwart Washington indoors, he has an opportunity of "posting my books, and putting them in good order," VOL. XXXV.-3.

Lawrence," who has hitherto made his garments. "Whether it be the fault of the tailor or of the measure sent, I cannot say, but certain it is my clothes have never fitted me well." He is also concerned because a recent invoice contained last year's fashions. For Mrs. Washington and her children no stuffs were too rich and substantial, and the description of those old brocades and tabbinets, lustrings, and goldwrought gauzes, seems to belong to times remote from the simplicity of later Republican days.

Life at Mount Vernon before the Revolution was, in short, happily uneventful. As Washington himself described it, in a letter to a kinsman then in London:

ent scarce worth reciting, for, as we live in a state of "The occurrences of this part of the world are at prespeaceful tranquillity ourselves, so we are at very little trouble to inquire after the operations against the Cherokees, who are the only people that disturb the repose of this great continent."

Upon the agreeable phases of Mount Vernon life embodied in Washington's relations with his step-children, I do not purpose here

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to touch.

We may bridge over those placid years and come to the day in 1775 when fiery-tongued Patrick Henry uttered before the Virginia Convention his impetuous "We must fight!" On the 15th of the succeeding

own family, the "cutting stroke" of separation
and solitude was enhanced by the breaking of
other social ties consequent upon the war.
Her nearest neighbors, the family of George
William Fairfax (the old colonel having long

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IN THE GARDEN AT MOUNT

June, Washington was chosen by the Con-
tinental Congress to be general and comman-
der-in-chief of the American army. After the
last fond days spent in galloping about his
happy hunting-grounds, before assuming the
charge of a nation, Washington was little more
than an occasional guest at Mount Vernon.
In a letter dated 1798, he says: "Twenty-
five years have passed away since I have
considered myself a permanent resident be-
neath my own roof at Mount Vernon." Al-
though the place was more than once supposed
to be in danger from British ships, as the
dwelling of the "rebel commander-in-chief,"
and Mrs. Washington was frequently urged
to abandon it, she preferred to remain there
until summoned by her chieftain to join him
at headquarters. Her ordinary plan was to
spend the winters of inaction with her hus-
band, returning to summer at Mount Ver-
non upon the resumption of spring hostilities.
Consider the dreariness of life on a Virginia
plantation during those troublous times. For
Martha Washington, living remote from her

VERNON.

since died), had removed to live in England,
meeting on their voyage up the River Thames
the outgoing cargoes of tea that worked such
mischief oversea. In the wilderness at Green-
way Court, old Lord Fairfax brooded, with
Another intimate
the abiding sorrow of an aged man, over the
turn affairs were taking.
friend, the Rev. Brian Fairfax of Towlston,
after nights and days of argument against
Washington's course in resisting the righteous
authority of the Crown, had abandoned him-
self to dignified seclusion in the confines of
his own estate. The relations of these consci-
entious Tories toward the blazing patriots of
Mount
that day were strained and painful. The
years of the war hung like a pall upon
Vernon.

It was in 1781 that Lund Washington, left in charge of Mount Vernon by his cousin, took alarm at repeated threats against the place, and endeavored to secure the good-will of the commander of a British man-of-war lying in the stream, by going aboard her with a liberal supply of provisions from the farm. This

proceeding, coming to Washington's ears, drew down upon his agent a rebuke stern and uncompromising, with the command rather to let the place be burned and ravaged than tamper with the enemy. The alternative was not again presented, and two years later saw Mount Vernon once more in gala dress, made ready for a three-days visit, at Christmas, of Washington, accompanied by his staff, the Comte de Rochambeau, and General Chastellux. No one who is unfamiliar with the old-style methods of Southern hospitality can realize the amount of cheery labor preluding an event like this. In all Virginia country houses, the preparation of ornamental confectionery devolved upon the ladies of the family. For days before the arrival of guests the entire pantry

house must have its sprig of cedar or of holly. The bedrooms, plain but exquisitely neat, were aired and garnished. The beds were made up with linen like that of the inn in Walton's "Angler"-" sheets that-look white and smell of lavender"-and decorated, moreover, with white dimity curtains and counterpanes of home-made knotted-work. Every fire-place was piled high with logs, and was haunted by a small dark personage brandishing a turkey wing, ready, as might be needed, to fan a flame or to sweep away the ashes. Tradition tells how noble Martha Washington, although saddened by the loss of her son two years before, and bearing fresh in memory the bitter privations of the American soldiers, nerved herself to do the honors as a good

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the Revolutionary war, when the old plantation life was as far as possible resumed, were varied by incessant tributes of admiration coming to him from the civilized world at large, and by the continual presence at his home of visitors both great and small. The writer is the owner of a memento of this period, of general interest as indicating the modesty with which Washington shrank from praise of himself. It is a framed mezzotint, under glass, of a full-length portrait by Peel of General Nathaniel Greene of Rhode Island, with an engraved legend naming the artists, and showing it to be "from the original picture in the possession of Mr. Brown, published by him April 22d, 1785, and sold at No. 10, George Yard, Lombard Street, London." It was presented by Washington to Mr. Carlyle; given by him in turn to his daughter, Mrs. Herbert; and by her left to her two maiden daughters. One of these ladies, both of whom died at a good old age in Alexandria, in 1863,

remembered a visit to Mount Vernon as a

their grandniece; but the war then preventing her from acquiring immediate possession, the picture was by a relative carried back to Mount Vernon, and there remained for eight years before it finally came to hand in New York, by express, and with the glass broken in transit. An inspection made of the print when the broken glass was removed brought to light the fact that a section cut from the lower margin had been replaced by an inserted piece of Bristol-board on which a text had been engrossed with pen and ink. A strip of paper, yellow with age, covered the inserted card-board, and not only rendered the writing illegible, but so concealed it that only the closest scrutiny could detect the lines at all. When this covering had been carefully cleaned off, the text below was revealed in these words:

"To his Excellency, General Washington, more exalted in Virtue than in Rank, In Gratitude for his laudable Labours which have been most honorably and Mankind, This Print is with the utmost respect presuccessfully exerted in the great cause of Liberty and sented by Joseph Brown."

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