's Weekly Report.

The Butler's House and Magnolia Set Out by Washington
the Year of His Death.

Spinning House--Last Building to the Right.

Weekly Report on the Work of the Spinners.

The Flower Garden.

A Page from a Cash Memorandum Book.

One of Washington's Tavern Bills.

CHAPTER I

A MAN IN LOVE WITH THE SOIL

One December day in the year 1788 a Virginia gentleman sat before his
desk in his mansion beside the Potomac writing a letter. He was a man of
fifty-six, evidently tall and of strong figure, but with shoulders a
trifle stooped, enormously large hands and feet, sparse grayish-chestnut
hair, a countenance somewhat marred by lines of care and marks of
smallpox, withal benevolent and honest-looking--the kind of man to whom
one could intrust the inheritance of a child with the certainty that it
would be carefully administered and scrupulously accounted for to the
very last sixpence.

The letter was addressed to an Englishman, by name Arthur Young, the
foremost scientific farmer of his day, editor of the _Annals of
Agriculture_, author of many books, of which the best remembered is his
_Travels in France_ on the eve of the French Revolution, which is still
read by every student of that stirring era.

"The more I am acquainted with agricultural affairs," such were the
words that flowed from the writer's pen, "the better I am pleased with
them; insomuch, that I can no where find so great satisfaction as in
those innocent and useful pursuits. In indulging these feelings I am led
to reflect how much more delightful to an undebauched mind is the task
of making improvements on the earth than all the vain glory which can be
acquired from ravaging it, by the most uninterrupted career of
conquests."

Thus wrote George Washington in the fulness of years, honors and
experience. Surely in this age of crimson mists we can echo his
correspondent that it was a "noble sentiment, which does honor to the
heart of this truly great man." Happy America to have had such a
philosopher as a father!

"I think with you that the life of a husbandman is the most delectable,"
he wrote on another occasion to the same friend. "It is honorable, it is
amusing, and, with judicious management, it is profitable. To see
plants rise from the earth and flourish by the superior skill and bounty
of the laborer fills a contemplative mind with ideas which are more easy
to be conceived than expressed."

The earliest Washingto