me a nice new papa,
Because father dear is old, bald, and gray?
I should like very much to hear what _he'd_ say."

[Begun in HARPER'S YOUNG PEOPLE No. 24, April 18.]

THE STORY OF GEORGE WASHINGTON.

BY EDWARD CARY.

CHAPTER VI.

[Illustration: WASHINGTON AT THE AGE OF FIFTY.

FROM A PORTRAIT BY COLONEL TRUMBULL.]

The private life of Washington was very simple. He was very fond of
farming, and studied it carefully, as he seems to have studied
everything that he took in hand. Some of his letters to Arthur Young, a
great English traveller, who was also a writer on farming, are very
interesting. In reading them it is easy to forget the General and the
public man, and to think only of the painstaking planter, eager to know
what was the best way to plant his various crops, or to plough his
different fields. He liked shade trees greatly, and had a great many
kinds of them at Mount Vernon, set out under his own direction, and some
of them with his own hand. Some of my readers may yet see them on the
pleasant sloping banks of the Potomac, below the city of Washington.
Even among the cares of the camp and the battle-field Washington found
time nearly every week to write minute directions to his superintendent,
who had charge of his farm, telling him just what work to do each day,
and how to do it. When he got back to his home, he took up the task of
seeing to things himself with the greatest enjoyment. Every morning
after breakfast he mounted his horse and rode about his ample fields,
and he seldom let anything prevent his doing so--neither bad weather,
nor the claims of visitors, of whom he had a host, nor anything else. He
laid out his time on an exact system. Each morning he arose before
sunrise to write letters and to read, and on his return from his ride
over his estate he again went to his study, and staid there attending to
business until three o'clock in the afternoon. At three he dined, and
gave the rest of the day and evening to his family and his guests. At
ten he went to bed.

But he was not to enjoy this happy, peaceful life very long. His
countrymen needed him as much in peace as in war, and soon called him
again to public life. After the American States had cut loose from Great
Britain, they found that their common affairs did not get on very well.
They had borrowed a good deal of money to carry on the war, and the only
way to pay it was by each State giving its part. But the people of the