life."

After advancing to the chair, and delivering his commission to the
President, he returned to his place, and received standing, the
answer of Congress which was delivered by the President. In the
course of his remarks, General Mifflin said:

"Having defended the standard of liberty in this new world: having
taught a new lesson useful to those who inflict, and to those who
feel oppression, you retire from the great theatre of action,
with the blessings of your fellow citizens; but the glory of your
virtues will not terminate with your military command: it will
continue to animate remotest ages."[1]

[Footnote 1: Marshall, IV, 563.]

The meeting then broke up, and Washington departed. He went that same
afternoon to Virginia and reached Mount Vernon in the evening. We can
imagine with what satisfaction and gratitude he, to whom home was the
dearest place in the world, returned to the home he had seen only once
by chance since the beginning of the Revolution, eight years before.
Probably few of those who had risen to the highest station in their
country said, and felt more honestly, that they were grateful at being
allowed by Fate to retire from office, than did Washington. To be
relieved of responsibility, free from the hourly spur, day and night,
of planning and carrying out, of trying to find food for starving
soldiers, of leading forlorn hopes against the truculent enemy, must
have seemed to the weary and war-worn General like a call from the
Hesperides. Men of his iron nature, and of his capacity for work and
joy in it, do not, of course, really delight in idleness. They may
think that they crave idleness, but in reality they crave the power of
going on.

It took comparatively little effort for Washington to fall into
his old way of life at Mount Vernon, although there, too, much was
changed. Old buildings had fallen out of repair. There were new
experiments to be tried, and the general purpose to be carried out of
making Mount Vernon a model place in that part of the country. Whether
he would or not, he was sought for almost daily by persons who came
from all parts of the United States, and from overseas. Hospitality
being not merely a duty, but a passion with him, he gladly received
the strangers and learned much from them. From their accounts of their
interviews we see that, although he was really the most natural of
men, some of them treated him as if he were so