There was much embarrassment among the lads when the question was repeated. George immediately replied, "Your favorite, madam, is dead."

"Dead!" she exclaimed; "how has this happened?" "That sorrel horse," said George, in a calm tone of voice, "has long been considered ungovernable, and beyond the power of man to tame him. We forced a bit into his mouth this morning. I mounted him and rode him around the field, and in a desperate struggle for the mastery he broke a blood-vessel, fell under me, and died."

The mother's cheek flushed for a moment, when she said to her boy,

"It is well; but while I regret the loss of my favorite animal, I rejoice in my son who always speaks the truth." This incident vividly illustrates the character of both the mother and her son.

Little George Washington was a much petted visitor at Mount Vernon, for Lawrence loved him tenderly, and after their father's death he took a parental interest in his affairs. He was under his brother's roof much of the time. There and at Belvoir, the elegant seat of the Fairfaxes, the sprightly boy was a favorite, and he enjoyed the great advantage of being in a refined social circle, where he became accustomed, at that susceptible period of his life, to the amenities of English society in its best phases. This had a marked influence upon his future character. At Mount Vernon his brother's companions-in-arms and naval officers were frequent guests. Their conversation upon martial deeds stimulated the inborn military spirit of the lad and an intense desire for adventure. Lawrence and Fairfax both encouraged the emotion.

YOUNG WASHINGTON AND THE BRITISH NAVY.

39

Believing the British navy to be a promising field for the advancement of young Washington, Lawrence proposed to his mother that he enter it. Her maternal feelings recoiled from the contemplation. George was her first-born child, and gave great promise of comfort to her. She was willing to make any reasonable self-sacrifice for his benefit, yet she could not endure the thought of surrendering him at that tender age to the rough life and the temptations to which he would be exposed, beyond the influence of a mother's tender care and advice. She hesitated long, but the earnest pleadings of the boy and the assurance of friends, especially of her physician, Dr. Spencer, that the step would redound to his great advantage, together with her own strong desire to be dutiful and just, caused her to finally yield her reluctant consent. Late in 1746, when George was nearly fourteen years of age, Lawrence procured for him a midshipman's warrant.

The ensuing winter was passed in joyous preparations by young Washington for entering upon his new sphere in life. At times his mother's fortitude became very weak. An intimate friend of the family at Fredericksburg (Robert Jackson) wrote to Lawrence:

"I am afraid Mrs. Washington will not keep up to her first resolution. She seems to dislike George's going to sea, and says several persons have told her it was a bad scheme. She offers several trifling objections, such as a fond, unthinking mother habitually suggests, and I find that one word against his going has more weight than ten for it."

At this juncture a letter received from her brother in London, dated May 19, 1747, settled the matter. He wrote:

"I understand that you are advised and have some thoughts of putting your son George to sea. I think he had better be put apprentice to a tinker, for a common sailor before the mast has by no means the common liberty of the subject; for they will press him from ship to ship, where he has fifty shillings a month, and make him take twenty-three, and cut and slash and use him like a negro, or rather like a dog. And as to any considerable preferment in the navy, it is not to be expected, as there are always so many gaping for it here who have interest, and he has none. And if he should get to be master of a Virginia ship (which it is very difficult to do), a planter who has three or four hundred acres of land and three or four slaves, if he be industrious, may live more comfortably, and leave his family in better bread than such a master of a ship can. . . . He must not be too hasty to be rich, but go on gently and with patience, as things will naturally go. This method, without aiming at being a fine gentleman before his time, will carry a man more comfortably and surely through the world than going to sea, unless it be a great chance indeed. I pray God keep you and yours.

"Your loving brother,

"JOSEPH BALL."

The writer of this letter evidently mistook the intended destination of the boy, supposing it to be the merchant instead of the naval service; but his argument was so cogent and so congenial to her feelings that Madam Washington resolved not to let her son go to sea. When this letter arrived, young Washington was at the point of departure in a British ship-of-war lying in the Potomac. His luggage was on board. His mother's later decision, kindly but firmly communicated, greatly disappointed her son, but with filial

THE DESTINY OF WASHINGTON.

4I

love and ready obedience he acquiesced and returned to his studies. He was destined by Heaven for a far nobler career than man had conceived for him.

This incident illustrates the truth of the familiar apothegm, "Man proposes but God disposes."

CHAPTER IV.

UNSELFISH, generous, and wise, Mary Washington most cheerfully allowed her son to leave the shelter of her roof and her absolute paternal guidance, before he was sixteen years of age, to engage in an arduous and even perilous pursuit for which his later studies had fitted him. He had a decided taste for mathematics. A private tutor (Master Williams) was employed to teach him the science, and young Washington's practical mind soon developed in him a genius. for its profitable use. When he left school he lived almost continually with his half-brother Lawrence, at Mount Vernon, and with the Fairfaxes, at Belvoir. By persistent study and home practice he became an expert land-surveyor, a profession then much employed and well remunerated in Virginia.

Lord Thomas Fairfax, a tall, quaint, near-sighted man, sixty years of age, who had been made misanthropic by disappointment in a love-affair in early life, was now in Virginia. He owned immense tracts of land in the rich valleys of the Alleghany Mountains. He had been educated at Oxford, and was a contributor to Addison's Spectator. Resolved to live in seclusion, he built a lodge in the midst of ten thousand acres in the wilderness, which he called "Greenway Court," as preliminary to the erection of a manor-house. He was an inveterate fox-hunter, and entertained with generous hospitality all visitors, especially devotees of the chase.