to Yorktown
to capture Cornwallis he visited his home for the first time in six
weary years, yet merely recorded: "I reached my own Seat at Mount Vernon
(distant 120 Miles from the Hd. of Elk) where I staid till the 12th."

Not a word of the emotions which that visit must have roused!

For almost six years after 1775 there is a gap in the diary, though for
some months of 1780 he sets down the weather. On May I, 1781, he begins
a new record, which he calls a _Journal_, and he expresses regret that
he has not had time to keep one all the time. The subjects now
considered are almost wholly military and the entries reveal a different
man from that of 1775. The grammar is better, the vocabulary larger, the
tone more elevated, the man himself is bigger and broader with an
infinitely wider viewpoint.

From November 5, 1781, for more than three years there is another
blank, except for the journal of his trip to his western lands already
referred to. But on January 1, 1785, he begins a new _Diary_ and
thenceforward continues it, with short intermissions, until the day of
his last ride over his estate.

A few of the diaries and journals have been lost, but most are still in
existence. Some are in the Congressional Library and there also is the
Toner transcript of these records. The transcript makes thirty-seven
large volumes. The diary is one of the main sources from which the
material for this book is drawn.

The original of the record of events for 1760 is a small book, perhaps
eight or ten inches long by four inches wide and much yellowed by age.
Part of the first entry stands thus:

"January 1, Tuesday

"Visited my Plantations and received an Instance of Mr. French's great
Love of Money in disappointing me of some Pork because the price had
risen to 22.6 after he had engaged to let me have it at 20 s."

On his return from his winter ride he found Mrs. Washington "broke out
with the Meazles." Next day he states with evident disgust that he has
taken the pork on French's own terms.

The weather record for 1760 was kept on blank pages of _The Virginia
Almanac_, a compendium that contains directions for making "Indico," for
curing bloody flux, for making "Physick as pleasant as a Dish of
Chocolate," for making a striking sun-dial, also "A Receipt to keep
one's self warm a whole Winter with a single Billet of Wood." To do this
last "Take a Billet of Wood of a competent Size, fling it out of the
Garret-Window into the Y