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"To be the strength, the inmost joy, of a man who, within the conditions of his life, seems to you a hero at every turn - there is no happiness more penetrating for a wife than this." So writes an eminent modern novelist of the higher joys of married life. To few women was granted such happiness and pride in fuller measure than to Martha Washington. In all that she did, or said, or wrote, she showed her full appreciation of her husband's character and aims, and her own earnest desire to set her life in the same high key.

Of what married life was to Washington we may gather from numerous expressions in his letters, from his reluctance to quit the congenial atmosphere of his home, and from his sympathetic interest in the love affairs of his young officers. A letter of congratulation, written to the Marquis de Chastellux, nearly thirty years after his own marriage, contains, beneath its good-humored bantering, an undercurrent of such deep content that we are tempted to quote a passage from it in answer to those who have of late spoken of Washington's marriage as one of convenience, as a step

1 Recollections and Private Memoirs of Washington, by G. W. P. Custis.

toward his advancement in life, in which his affections were not seriously engaged.

"In reading your very friendly and acceptable letter of the 21st December, 1787, which came to hand by the last mail, I was as you may well suppose, not less delighted than surprised to come across the plain American word 'my wife.' A wife! well, my dear Marquis, I can hardly refrain from smiling to find that you are caught at last. I saw by the eulogium you often made on the happiness of domestic life in America, that you had swallowed the bait, and that you would as surely be taken, (one day or other,) as you was a philosopher and a soldier.

"So your day has at length come: I am glad of it with all my heart and soul. It is quite good enough for you; now you are well served for coming to fight in favour of the American Rebels, all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, by catching that terrible contagion, which, like the small-pox, or the plague, a man can only have once in his life, because it lasts him, (at least with us in America I don't know how you manage these

matters in France,) for his whole lifetime."

VI

A JOURNEY TO CAMBRIDGE

GENERAL WASHINGTON's hope, expressed in his letter to his wife upon taking command of the army, that he should return to her in the fall, was not realized; indeed, during the eight years to follow he only visited twice the home that was so dear to him. In October, 1775, Lund Washington, who was left in charge of Mount Vernon, wrote to his kinsman:

"'Tis true that many people have made a stir about Mrs. Washington's continuing at Mount Vernon, but I cannot think her in any sort of danger. The thought I believe originated in Alexandria. From thence it got to Loudoun. I am told the people of Loudoun talked of setting a guard to conduct her into Berkeley, with some of their principal men to persuade her to leave this and accept their offer. Mr. John Augustine Washington wrote to her pressing her to leave Mount Vernon. danger, nor do I. her in the dead of

She does not believe herself in Without they attempt to take night, they would fail, for ten

minutes notice would be sufficient for her to get out of the way. Lord Dunmore will hardly venture himself up this River, nor can I think he will send up on that errand. Surely, her old acquaintance, the attorney1 (who with his family are aboard his ship) would put him off doing an act of that kind. I have never advised her to stay, nor indeed to go. Col. Bassett thinks her in no danger. She sets off next week with her son and daughter down to the country."

Again, on October 15, he wrote:

"Mrs. Washington, I believe, was in no apprehension of Lord Dunmore's doing her an injury, until your mentioning it in several of your last letters. She intended to set off tomorrow down the country. I proposed to her to put whatever she thought most valuable into trunks, and should there be a necessity to move them, it will be sooner done. She will stay tomorrow and do it. Your papers are among the things which will be put up, etc."

The thought of Lord Dunmore carrying off Mrs. Washington, either at dead of night or at high noon, seems equally absurd in the retrospect; but to Virginians, who knew their ex-Governor as a desperate and vindictive foe, ravaging their shores "in search of what he might devour," the idea of his despoiling

1 John Randolph, who accompanied Lord Dunmore.

Mount Vernon, obtaining forcible possession of the wife of the leader of the rebellious army and holding her as a hostage, appeared quite within the bounds of possibility.

That such fears were not groundless was proved by Dunmore's later excursions along the coast, his bombardment and burning of the town of Norfolk, and by a last desperate attempt made by him upon Mount Vernon in July, 1776, when the Prince William County militia and a furious storm of wind and rain Idrove the marauders forever from the shores of Virginia.

Although Mrs. Washington seems to have had no fears for her own safety in those autumn days, the General was evidently anxious about her, and her good friend and neighbor, Mr. George Mason, considered her position dangerous, as he sent her a message early one morning advising her to retire into the country away from the coast. In writing to Washington of this alarm, Mr. Mason, said: —

"I sent my family many miles back in the country, and advised Mrs. Washington to do likewise, as a prudential movement. At first she said. 'No; I will not desert my post;' but she finally did so with reluctance, rode only a few miles, and plucky little woman as she is, stayed away only one night."

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