ce there of a lover of growing things. From
this productive place fine hams and bacon were forwarded to Lafayette
and his family in France and were there eaten with the keenest relish.
Fine birds were also sent--ducks, pheasants, and red partridges. In
return Lafayette dispatched by request some special breeds of wolf
hounds and a pair of jackasses; also, strange trees and plants,
together with varied gifts such as Paris only could devise. The
visitor to Mount Vernon finds in the family dining room Lafayette's
ornamental clock and rose jars, and his mahogany chair in Mrs.
Washington's sitting room. The key to the Bastille, which he sent in
1789, is shown under a glass cover on the wall by the staircase in the
entrance hall, and a model of that ancient fortress of tyranny, made
from a block of stone from the renowned French prison, sent over in
1793, stands in happy irony in the banquet hall. A bedchamber on the
second floor is pointed out as the room in which Lafayette slept. It
still bears his name.

After Lafayette returned to France, he lived for years in semi-exile on
an estate known as La Grange, that Madame de Lafayette had inherited. It
lay about forty miles east of Paris, in a beautiful country covered with
peach orchards and vineyards. At the time it was, from an agricultural
point of view, in a sadly neglected condition; and it was not by any
means the least of the achievements of Lafayette that he turned his hand
cleverly to the great task of developing this estate into a really
productive farm, and succeeded. Beginning with a single plow--for he was
too poor at first to buy numerous appliances--he gradually developed the
estate into a valuable property. After a time he supplied himself with
fine breeds of cattle, sheep, and pigs; indeed, specimens of various
kinds from all zones of the earth were sent him by his friends the
American shipmasters, who, it must be remembered, appreciated the
ardent efforts he had made to establish American commerce. To
Washington, who was a good farmer as well as a good President, every
detail of these labors would have been interesting if he had been
living.

In patriarchal happiness Lafayette carried on the estate of eight
hundred French acres, with all its industries, in a perfect system. In
a fine old mansion built in the days of Louis IX, Lafayette lived with
his two daughters and their families under an efficient household
system. Sometimes twelve cousins, brothers and