ard, run down Stairs as hard as ever you can
drive; and when you have got it, run up again with it at the same
Measure of Speed; and thus keep throwing down, and fetching up, till the
Exercise shall have sufficiently heated you. This renew as often as
Occasion shall require. _Probatum est_."

This receipt would seem worth preserving in this day of dear fuel. As
Washington had great abundance of wood and plenty of negroes to cut it,
he probably did not try the experiment--at least such a conclusion is
what writers on historical method would call "a safe inference."

[Illustration: First Page of Washington's Digest of Duhamel's Husbandry]

There is in the almanac a rhyme ridiculing physicians and above the
March calendar are printed the touching verses:

"Thus of all Joy and happiness bereft,
And with the Charge of Ten poor Children left:
A greater Grief no Woman sure can know,
Who,--with Ten Children--who will have me now."

Also there are some other verses, very broad and "not quite the proper
thing," as Kipling has it. But it must not be inferred that Washington
approved of them.

Washington also kept cash memorandum books, general account books, mill
books and a special book in which he recorded his accounts with the
estate of the Custis children. These old books, written in his neat
legible hand, are not only one of our chief sources of information
concerning his agricultural and financial affairs, but contain many
sidelights upon historical events. It is extremely interesting, for
example, to discover in one of the account books that in 1775 at Mount
Vernon he lent General Charles Lee--of Monmouth fame--L15, and "to Ditto
lent him on the Road from Phila to Cambridge at different times" L9.12
more, a total of L24.12. In later years Lee intrigued against Washington
and said many spiteful things about him, but he never returned the loan.
The account stood until 1786, when it was settled by Alexander White,
Lee's executor.

In the Cash Memorandum books we can trace Washington's military
preparations at the beginning of the Revolution. Thus on June 2, 1775,
being then at Philadelphia, he enters: "By Expences bringing my Horses
from Baltimore," L2.5. Next day he pays thirty pounds for "Cartouch
Boxes &c. for Prince Wm. Comp." June 6, "By Covering my Holsters,"
L0.7.6; "By a Cersingle," L0.7.6; "By 5 Books--Military," L1.12.0. He
was preparing for Gage and Howe and Cornwallis and whether the kno