d bottom, the inside painted with a mixture of
tar and red lead."

In the course of his business career Washington also employed a
considerable number of free white men, who likewise were usually skilled
workers or overseers. He commonly engaged them for the term of one year
and by written contracts, which he drew up himself, a thing he had
learned to do when a boy by copying legal forms. Many of these papers
still survive and contracts with joiners and gardeners jostle inaugural
addresses and opinions of cabinet meetings.

As a rule the hired employees received a house, an allowance of corn,
flour, meat and perhaps other articles, the money payment being
comparatively small.

Some of the contracts contain peculiar stipulations. That with a certain
overseer provided: "And whereas there are a number of whiskey stills
very contiguous to the said Plantations, and many idle, drunken and
dissolute People continually resorting the same, priding themselves in
debauching sober and well-inclined Persons the said Edd. Voilett doth
promise as well for his own sake as his employers to avoid them as
he ought."

Probably most readers have heard of the famous contract with the
gardener Philip Bater, who had a weakness for the output of stills such
as those mentioned above. It was executed in 1787 and, in consideration
of Bater's agreement "not to be disguised with liquor except on times
hereinafter mentioned," provided that he should be given "four dollars
at Christmas, with which he may be drunk four days and four nights; two
dollars at Easter to effect the same purpose; two dollars at
Whitsuntide to be drunk for two days; a dram in the morning, and a drink
of grog at dinner at noon."

Washington's most famous white servant was Thomas Bishop, who figures in
some books as a negro. He had been the personal servant of General
Braddock, and tradition says that the dying General commended him to
Washington. At all events Washington took him into his service at ten
pounds per year and, except for a short interval about 1760, Bishop
remained one of his retainers until death. It was Bishop and John Alton
who accompanied Washington on his trip to New York and Boston in
1756--that trip in the course of which, according to imaginative
historians, the young officer became enamored of the heiress Mary
Phillipse. Doubtless the men made a brave show along the way, for we
know that Washington had ordered for them "2 complete livery suits for