shake that told of love and loyalty and tender feeling. Not a word was spoken. Then, still silent and sorrowful, his soldiers conducted him to the water-side. Washington stepped into the boat to be rowed across to the New Jersey shore; he waved his hat in farewell to his companions of so many fields, and the general they so loved left them forever.

Then he went to Annapolis where Congress was in session. Before the assembled body which represented the newly-made United States of America he stood, while all men looked upon him in reverence and respect, and in a short address resigned his commission as Commander-inChief of the American army.

Then he went to his dearly loved home at Mount Vernon. He was a simple, private citizen now. He reached home on Christmas eve, and you may be sure that he had, next day at Mount Vernon, truly a Merry Christmas.

CHAPTER IX.

HOW WASHINGTON WISHED TO BE A FARMER

AND COULDN'T.

ASHINGTON was like a boy just going into vaca

WASH

tion time when he got back to Mount Vernon. A great load had been lifted from his shoulders. For seven years he had borne a strain that few men could

have stood

so long, and that few could have stood at all. Now the burden was removed and he could think of his farm and his servants and his home matters, without feeling that he must sit down to plan a battle, or wrestle with Congress, or consult with his generals over some important scheme.

For a while he would wake up each morning, almost with a feeling of surprise that he had no grave or important business to attend to that day and that, as he expressed it, he was "no longer a public man, nor had anything to do with public transactions."

When he first returned to Mount Vernon at Christmas time he was almost "snowed under," so severe was the winter. But as the roads became clear, visitors flocked to Mount Vernon to see and talk with the man who had rode away from it one fine morning as just Colonel Washington, and had returned to it seven years later General George

Washington, one of the most famous of the world's great

men.

For, try as hard as he might, he could not help being what he said he was not "a public man." He was the best-known American. He was the one whose advice was most widely sought and most generally followed. Letters came to him from all over the world and were about all sorts of things, from an invitation to visit the king and queen of France, and a plan for civilizing the Indians, to a request to sit for his portrait and permission to call a child after his name. To all these letters, to the management of his large plantation and to the development of his western lands, Washington tried to give his attention; so, what with these things and receiving his visitors, he did not have much spare time.

Mingled with these was his interest in even greater matters. George Washington had gone to the wars a Virginian; he had come home an American. Do you realize what that meant? It meant that he loved his own State, but that he loved his country still more. He was almost the first American to have this broader understanding of things and to foresee the wonderful future of the new nation. But, to be a nation, he knew that two things were necessary for these United States-union and protection. The first could never come about if the thirteen states kept on being selfish, thinking only of their own interests, “pulling and hauling" in different directions; the second could

only be secured by a system of forts and military organization in charge of Congress, and by a watchful care over the Western border-land.

You must remember that when the Revolution closed,

two foreign powers claimed possession of vast sections of what is now the United States. These were England and Spain. Washington knew that these two great nations could keep the United States from making the most of its

Western country and could control the navigation of the Mississippi River, unless the States were united in protecting and enlarging the western border. So, before he had been many days at home, "farming" at Mount Vernon, he began writing to prominent men in different sections of the country telling them how he felt about these things and what he thought the States should do. But they cannot do anything that will last," he said, "unless they agree to live together under some plan of union, by which they can all join hands to pull together for the good of all, and to appoint certain men who should represent them in the councils of the new nation and some one man to be its head and its guiding hand."

Even before Washington left the army, at the close of the war, he had seen what was needed and had written to the governors of the different States a strong letter begging them to do something toward establishing a union of all the States under a central government and, what he called, "a federal head." He said the same thing to his soldiers when he bade them farewell, and so it was known pretty generally throughout the land what Washington's ideas were, and people had a way of saying: If General Washington thinks it is best, then it is best!"

So, when, from his home at Mount Vernon, where he had thought all he had to do was to attend to his own affairs and "run his farm," he began to write letters to leading men, trying to get them to do something, it was seen