"These are the things, which once possess'd
Will make a life that's truly bless'd
A good Estate on healthy Soil,
Not Got by Vice nor yet by toil;
Round a warm Fire, a pleasant Joke,
With Chimney ever free from Smoke:
A strength entire, a Sparkling Bowl,
A quiet Wife, a quiet Soul,

A Mind, as well as body, whole
Prudent Simplicity, constant Friend,
A Diet which no art Commends;

A Merry Night without much Drinking
A happy Thought without much Thinking;
Each Night by Quiet Sleep made Short
A Will to be but what thou art:
Possess'd of these, all else defy
And neither wish nor fear to Die
These are things, which once Possess'd
Will make a life that's truly bless'd.”

In 1760 Colonel George William Fairfax and his wife sailed for England for a brief visit. There was doubtless a farewell dinner. Doubtless Washington toasted each of his guests and perhaps when he stretched out his glass to Sally Fairfax, she followed a pretty custom of the day; perhaps her long slim fingers lifted one petal from a rose at her breast and let it fall into his brimming wine.

As he raised the glass and the petal smote his lips, his eyes upon her must have had much to say.

Sally, no doubt, smiled back triumphantly in her manner. She had conquered herself as well as him.

Martha watched them both no doubt, having learned from gossips or guessed from countless little clues many things that we cannot know. And she doubtless smiled, also. After all, she held Mr. Washington.

She probably liked Sally a little better for going abroad. Then, no doubt, Washington rose to his full height, raised

his charged glass high and gave the toast that was going up all over the province:

"To the King and Queen, the Governor of Virginia and his Lady, and Success to American Trade and Commerce!"

I

XXXI

"INDEPENDENCY, AND WHAT NOT"

N time, Washington began to add to his estate, not hundreds of acres, but tens of thousands of acres, and

to cast his eyes westward with an enthusiasm that only later events of a revolutionary nature turned back to the north and east.

For the present he was an English squire on English soil, far from wars and the rumors of wars. The thought of a rebellion against his King, if it entered his brain, went out again at once as a silly fantasy.

There were anarchists and maniacs who had used the strange word, "independence." As early as 1738, it had been necessary for Mr. Joshua Gee1 to prove how ridiculous the idea was. Even if the colonists grew so rich as to forget their loyalty, since they nearly all lived on navigable rivers and bays, the British navy could easily reach and subdue them.

In 1748, a Swedish botanist, Professor Peter Kalm 2 had prophesied that the colonies would some day outgrow dependence on little England. But then, he was only a Swede. How could he "peer and botanize" on American hearts?

Nobody could foresee what the capture of Fort Du Quesne and other successes of the brilliant Mr. Pitt were leading to, least of all the supposed savior of the empire, Mr. Pitt. As Professor Claude H. Van Tyne says:

"It was the strain which the Seven Years' War put upon the relations between Great Britain and her American colonies which forced into prominence every subject of con

troversy which for a hundred years had been setting by the ears the royal governor and the provincial assembly. Americans had never so clarified their ideas on constitutional questions, and, aided by the stress of war, had demanded. everything nominated in the bond. What assistance had been secured by Pitt from the American colonies had been bought at an alarming price-concessions which deprived the governors of all but their pomp, and left the assemblies with every real power. Moreover, the utter want of any sense of loyalty to the empire on the part of individual colonists was shown in the extent to which illicit trade was carried on with the enemy. Not all the British naval activity could prevent colonial merchants from supplying French colonies. with the provisions for want of which they must have capitulated. Fortunes were made in the trade, and so demoralized was public opinion that convictions on clear proof were not to be gotten from colonial juries." 3

3

But Washington was no smuggler. Washington was loyal. Even when he quarreled with England it was as an Englishman jealous of the rights of an Englishman when a fool or a knave of a minister mismanaged the King's good will toward his devoted subjects overseas.

As late as 1775, in writing to George William Fairfax, then in England, he laid the blame for the battle of Lexington on "the ministerial troops (for we do not, nor can we yet prevail upon ourselves to call them the King's troops). if the retreat had not been as precipitate as it was, and God knows it could not well have been more so, the ministerial troops must have surrendered. . . . Unhappy it is, though to reflect, that a brother's sword has been sheathed in a brother's breast."

He was pleading with the Fairfaxes to understand his feelings, and he signed himself, "with sincere regard and affectionate compliments to Mrs. Fairfax.”✦

If he could write so, after Lexington, and go on protesting his loyalty when he was once more a soldier and the commander-in-chief of a larger body of provincials, no wonder he wrote earlier, on October 9th, 1774, to persuade his old comrade and fellow-Virginian, Captain Robert Mackenzie, that he was "abused, grossly abused," by the strange people who were telling him "that the people of Massachusetts are rebellious, setting up for independency, and what

not."

Since he wrote that letter from Philadelphia (when he was attending the first meeting of what was called a Continental Congress) he could and did assure Mackenzie, from his personal knowledge, "that it is not the wish or interest of that government, or any other upon this continent, separately or collectively, to set up for independence . no such thing is desired by any thinking man in all North America."

But all that turmoil was a fortnight of years away from 1760, and everything was rosy.

In the very year after Washington's marriage, England received a new King, George III, a charming young twentytwo-year-old, of whom Walpole said: "He seems all good nature and wishing to satisfy everybody."

"The people rejoiced," says Mr. Frank Arthur Mumby, "in again possessing a King who could speak their own language." He could not spell it-who could?-but he wrote in his maiden speech: "Born and educated in this country, I glory in the name of Britain, and the peculiar happiness of my life will ever consist in promoting the welfare of a people whose loyalty and affection I consider as the greatest and most permanent security of my Throne."

That "peculiar happiness" turned out to be very peculiar in the eyes of his subjects at home and abroad, but for the present he was a welcome substitute for his old father with