Heaven for your safe return I must accuse you
of great unkindness in refusing us the pleasure of seeing you this night.
I do assure you nothing but our being satisfied that our company would be
disagreeable should prevent us from trying if our Legs would not carry us
to Mount Vernon this night, but if you will not come to us to-morrow
morning very early we shall be at Mount Vernon.

"S[ALLY] FAIRFAX,
"ANN SPEARING.
"ELIZ'TH DENT."

Nor is this the only feminine postscript of this time, for in the
postscript of a letter from Archibald Cary, a leading Virginian, he is
told that "Mrs. Cary & Miss Randolph joyn in wishing you that sort of
Glory which will most Indear you to the Fair Sex."

In 1756 Washington had occasion to journey on military business to Boston,
and both in coming and in going he tarried in New York, passing ten days
in his first visit and about a week on his return. This time was spent
with a Virginian friend, Beverly Robinson, who had had the good luck to
marry Susannah Philipse, a daughter of Frederick Philipse, one of the
largest landed proprietors of the colony of New York. Here he met the
sister, Mary Philipse, then a girl of twenty-five, and, short as was the
time, it was sufficient to engage his heart. To this interest no doubt are
due the entries in his accounts of sundry pounds spent "for treating
Ladies," and for the large tailors' bills then incurred. But neither
treats nor clothes won the lady, who declined his proposals, and gave her
heart two years later to Lieutenant-Colonel Roger Morris. A curious sequel
to this disappointment was the accident that made the Roger Morris house
Washington's head-quarters in 1776, both Morris and his wife being
fugitive Tories. Again Washington was a chance visitor in 1790, when, as
part of a picnic, he "dined on a dinner provided by Mr. Marriner at the
House lately Colo. Roger Morris, but confiscated and in the occupation of
a common Farmer."

[Illustration: MARY PHILIPSE]

It has been asserted that Washington loved the wife of his friend George
William Fairfax, but the evidence has not been produced. On the contrary,
though the two corresponded, it was in a purely platonic fashion, very
different from the strain of lovers, and that the correspondence implied
nothing is to be found in the fact that he and Sally Carlyle (another
Fairfax daughter) also wrote each other quite as frequently and on
the same friendly footing; indeed, Washington evidently