of gambling in camp, though he gambled himself, lightly. To add to his other confusions, Washington had a familiar and sorry wrangle with a Maryland officer, Captain Dagworthy, who had fought at Braddock's field under a royal commission. He would not obey Dinwiddie's Colonel Washington, and was insulting in his manner. Since Fort Cumberland was in Maryland, Washington was in a quandary that Dinwiddie could not solve.

Dagworthy, on the strength of an obsolete commission, though he had only 30 men under him, refused to obey Washington, who commanded 500. Dagworthy refused to accept even a countersign or let Washington touch the provisions at the fort. Dinwiddie wanted Washington to arrest Dagworthy, but Washington declined to risk the decision. of the foreign ministry on such a colonial presumption.

He offered to resign, "rather than submit to the Comand of a Person who I think has not such superlative Merit," but that solution was refused. His officers, who shared his indignation, drew up a memorial and asked him to take it to Governor Shirley of Massachusetts, who had been made commander-in-chief of all the British forces in America after Braddock's death. They begged to be put on the same footing with royal officers.

Washington asked Dinwiddie's permission to go and Dinwiddie gladly gave it. He wrote in high praise of Washington, and prepared for him, not only a strong letter to Shirley, but cordial introductions to other governors, with requests for information to be transmitted by the young colonel.2

It was a long ride for a colonel to take to discipline a captain, but it gave Washington the first glimpse of the country he was to unite and hold together, and it gave the country the chance to see what a magnificent creature he was before it invited him to make another ride to Boston twenty years later.

Before leaving he wrote to Lieutenant-Colonel Stephen, that he had solicited permission to go to Boston to lay the situation before General Shirley, with whom he had "a personal acquaintance, which I thought might add some weight. . . as I have taken the fatigue &c of this tedious journey upon myself. . . . I hope you will conduct everything in my absence for the interest and honor of the service. . . . You may tell Mr. Livingston for me, that, if the soldiers are not skilled in arms equal to what may reasonably be expected, he most assuredly shall answer it at my return. And I must ingenuously tell you, that I also expect to find them expert at bush-fighting." 28

He did his utmost to keep officers and men up to the standard, and when an ensign was court-martialled and dismissed for conduct which Washington called infamous, he delivered an address to his officers that shows his own high opinion of the service:

"This timely warning of the effects of misbehaviour will, I hope, be instrumental in animating the younger officers to a laudable emulation in the service of their country. Not that I apprehend any of them can be guilty of offences of this nature: but there are many other misdemeanors, that will, without due circumspection, gain upon inactive minds, and produce consequences equally disgraceful.

"I would, therefore, earnestly recommend, in every point of duty, willingness to undertake, and intrepid resolution to execute. Remember, that it is the actions, and not the commission, that make the officer, and that there is more expected from him, than the title. Do not forget, that there ought to be a time appropriated to attain this knowledge, as well as to indulge pleasure. And as we now have no opportunities to improve from example, let us read for this desirable end. There is Bland's and other treatises which will give the wished-for information.

"I think it my duty, gentlemen, as I have the honour to preside over you, to give this friendly admonition; especially as I am determined, as far as my small experience in service, my abilities, and interest of the service may dictate, to observe the strictest discipline through the whole economy of my behaviour. On the other hand, you may as certainly depend upon having the strictest justice administered to all, and that I shall make it the most agreeable part of my duty to study merit, and reward the brave and deserving. I assure you, gentlemen, that partiality shall never bias my conduct, nor shall prejudice injure any; but, throughout the whole tenor of my proceedings, I shall endeavour, as far as I am able, to reward and punish, without the least diminution." 29

In spite of his bad material and all the wretched handicaps he had to overcome, his own earnestness, his studiousness, his fairness and his tireless energy whipped his raw and unwilling, drinking, gaming, quarrelsome men into the best provincial troops in America by 1760. But 1760 was a long way off.

He set out on February 4th, 1756, on a five-hundredmile ride in the dead of winter. He made it a tour of state, taking along his aides-de-camp, Captain Mercer and Captain Stewart, also Bishop and another servant. received officially as a hero of the late tragedy, and colonial governors greeted him with respect.

He was

He kept his accounts with his usual care, and must have had a good time. He had spoken of "the Fatigue &c of this tedious journey." There was more "&c" than tedium, for it gave his heart, sick of frontier horrors and failures, the respite of northern drawing-rooms and beautiful ladies, who were not Virginian, but very human. It brought him an escape from the teasing of Sally Fairfax and his only recorded love affair with a Northerner-or should one say, a Northerness?

A

XVII

HE RIDES NORTH TO A NEW LOVE

MORE gorgeous dandy never rode than the
Colonel Washington of 1756. As even Thomas

Jefferson called him "the best horseman of his age and the most graceful rider that could be seen on horseback," it can be imagined how the women fell before him.

He was always of a foppish turn and he kept his toilet as minutely as his expense books, which show heavy outlays with the Taylors, the Hatters, the Jewellers and the Sadlers. He spent his twenty-fourth birthday in Philadelphia and reached New York February 15th. He had a cordial welcome. He went to "Mrs. Barons Rout."

He lost 8 shillings at cards one night, also he did a good deal of shopping. He paid twelve pounds ten "for a Hatt," a Taylors Bill of ninety-five pounds seven and three, and for "Silver Lace" almost ninety-five pounds.

Though his business was in Boston, and the Indians were scalping and burning everywhere along the diminishing frontier of Virginia, Washington found reason to tarry in New York.

The reason was Mary Philipse of Yonkers.1

1

He had been persuaded to lodge at the house of a fellowVirginian who had married North and rich-Beverly Robinson, son of the speaker of the House of Burgesses. Robinson had married Susanna Philipse, an heiress of the founder of Philipse Manor on the Hudson, and appallingly wealthy. Susanna had a younger sister, Mary, called Polly, very pretty, still a spinster at twenty-six, but most attractive.

Washington always had an insatiable love for land, acreage. And it probably did not hurt Mary Philipse in his eyes, when he learned that, though she was nearly two years older than he, she would bring to her husband her share of the estate, a small matter of 51,102 acres. That was more than Washington ever accumulated, counting his wild Western lands.

The Beverly Robinson house in New York was one of the most important in town. Beverly Robinson had recently been a major, and distinguished himself at the storming of Quebec. In God's good time, he would be one of the leaders of the New York opposition to the stamp tax, but when the test of loyalty came, he would abide by his King, raise a Loyal Regiment, and serve as its colonel. At the end of the war, all his estates would be confiscated. But at this time a war of the colonies with England was unimaginable and Washington would probably have knocked down anybody who prophesied that he could ever be disloyal to his King.

Among the brilliant company at Beverly Robinson's, Washington was at first delighted to find a comrade of Braddock's battlefield, one of the three musketeers who had served as aides of the old bulldog-no less a friend than Captain Roger Morris. Washington alone had not been scratched, though his hat and clothes were bullet-riddled and two horses killed under him. Captain Morris and Captain Orme had been wounded severely, and shipped back North for repairs.

Captain Morris was an Englishman born, and just now thirty. After the first cordial greetings of so close a friend in so fierce an experience, Col. Washington was chilled to learn that Captain Morris was making a prior claim on Mary Philipse, who was not indifferent to him.

Washington, riding all the way to Boston to suppress an English captain who showed no deference to a Virginia