ÆT. 65.]

DEPARTURE FOR MOUNT VERNON.

479

CHAPTER XXXVII.

WASHINGTON LEAVES PHILADELPHIA FOR MOUNT VERNON-RECEIVES HONORS BY THE WAY-HIS ARRIVAL HOME-HIS ENJOYMENT OF PRIVATE LIFE-LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS HIS OWN PICTURE OF HIS DAILY LIFE-ENTERTAINMENT OF STRANGERS BURDENSOME-INVITES HIS NEPHEW TO MOUNT VERNON -NELLY CUSTIS AND HER SUITORS - WASHINGTON'S LETTER TO HER LAWRENCE LEWIS PREFERRED- WASHINGTON'S DREAM OF PERMANENT REPOSE DISTURBED BY A GATHERING STORM -EARLY ASSOCIATIONS RECALLED AGAIN SUMMONED INTO

PUBLIC LIFE.

WASHINGTON left Philadelphia for Mount Vernon on the ninth of March, a private citizen and a happy man. He was accompanied by Mrs. Washington and her grand-daughter, Eleanor Parke Custis; and by George Washington Lafayette and his preceptor, M. Frestel, whose arrival and residence in the United States we have already noticed. George Washington Parke Custis, the brother of Eleanor, or "Nelly," as she was familiarly called, was then in college at Princeton, where he had been for several months. The letters which have been preserved by the Custis family, of the correspondence between Washington and that adopted son, during the college life of the latter, are very interesting, and exhibit the Father of his Country in a light in which he is not viewed by history in her delineation of him, namely, as the father of a talented but wayward boy.

Ever desirous of giving words of encouragement and the meed of praise to the deserving, Washington handed to young Bartholomew Dandridge, his private secretary, on the morning of his departure for Mount Vernon, the following letter:

"Your conduct, during a six years' residence in my family, having been such as to meet my full approbation, and believing that a declaration to this effect would be satisfactory to yourself, and

justice requiring it from me, I make it with pleasure, and in full confidence that those principles of honor, integrity, and benevolence, which I have reason to believe have hitherto guided your steps, will still continue to mark your conduct. I have only to add a wish, that you may lose no opportunity of making such advances in useful acquirements as may benefit yourself, your friends, and mankind; and I am led to anticipate an accomplishment of this wish, when I consider the manner in which you have hitherto improved such occasions as offered themselves to you.

"The career of life on which you are now entering, will present new scenes and frequent opportunities for the improvement of a mind desirous of obtaining useful knowledge; but I am sure you will never forget that, without virtue and without integrity, the finest talents and the most brilliant accomplishments can never gain the respect, or conciliate the esteem, of the truly valuable part of mankind."

On his journey to the Potomac, the retired president received every mark of respect, love, and veneration, from the people. "Last evening," said a Baltimore paper of the thirteenth of March, "arrived in this city, on his way to Mount Vernon, the illustrious object of veneration and gratitude, GEORGE WASHINGTON. His excellency was accompanied by his lady and Miss Custis, and by the son of the unfortunate Lafayette and his preceptor. At a distance from the city he was met by a crowd of citizens, on horse and foot, who thronged the road to greet him, and by a detachment of Captain Hollingsworth's troop, who escorted him through as great a concourse of people as Baltimore ever witnessed. On alighting at the Fountain Inn, the general was saluted with reiterated and thundering huzzas from the spectators."*

"The attentions we met with on our journey," wrote Washington to Mr. M'Henry, the secretary of war, "were very flattering, and by some, whose minds are differently formed from mine, would have been highly relished; but I avoided, in every instance, when I had any previous knowledge of the intention, and could by ear

Sparks's Life and Writings of Washington, xi. 197, note.

ET. 05.]

ENJOYMENTS OF PRIVATE LIFE.

481

He seldom suc

nest entreaties prevail, all parade and escorts." ceeded, for intelligence of his approach went before him, and citizens. and soldiers hastened to do homage to the great Patriot and Chief. Washington arrived at Mount Vernon on the evening of the fourteenth of March. Never did the threshold of his mansion receive a happier man. The servants flocked around him like children come to greet a returning father, and there was joy in the household and all over the estate of Mount Vernon. The master fairly revelled in the luxury of private life and the repose of domestic enjoyment. Yet he did not sit down, an idle man and indifferent spectator of passing events. "Let me pray you to have the goodness," he wrote to Mr. M'Henry, "to communicate to me occasionally such matters as are interesting, and not contrary to the rules of your official duty to disclose. We get so many details in the gazettes, and of such different complexions, that it is impossible to know what credence to give to any of them."

Now, escaped from the turmoils of politics, Washington resolved to cast the burden of speculations concerning them from his mind. During almost his entire administration, the politics of France had been a constant source of anxiety to him, and had given him more real vexation, directly and indirectly, than all other matters of his public life combined. "The conduct of the French government,” he now wrote, "is so much beyond calculation, and so unaccountable upon any principle of justice, or even of that sort of policy which is familiar to plain understandings, that I shall not now puzzle my brains in attempting to develop the motives of it."

To Oliver Wolcott he wrote in May: "For myself, having turned aside from the broad walks of political into the narrow paths of private life, I shall leave it with those whose duty it is to consider subjects of this sort [the calling of an extraordinary session of Congress], and, as every good citizen ought to do, conform to whatsoever the ruling powers shall decide. To make and sell a little flour annually, to repair houses (going fast to ruin), to build one for the security of my papers of a public nature, and to amuse myself in agricultural and rural pursuits, will constitute employment