arned the magnanimity of his conduct towards
one Payne, who knocked him down for a supposed insult. Mr. Payne relates
that after the Revolution he called upon Washington at Mount Vernon.

"As I drew near the house," he says, "I began to experience a rising
fear lest he should call to mind the blow I had given him in former
days. Washington met me at the door with a kind welcome, and conducted
me into an adjoining room where Mrs. Washington sat.

"'Here, my dear,' said he, presenting me to his lady, 'here is the
little man you have so often heard me talk of, and who, on a difference
between us one day, had the resolution to knock me down, big as I am; I
know you will honor him as he deserves, for I assure you he has the
heart of a true Virginian.'"

Mr. Payne adds: "He said this with an air which convinced me that his
long familiarity with war had not robbed him of his nobleness of heart.
And Mrs. Washington looked at him as if he appeared to her greater and
lovelier than ever."

The same industry distinguished him on his return to his farms, for
which he was so well known before the war. His rule was to rise at four
o'clock and retire at nine. The forenoon was employed in labor and
overseeing the work on his plantations. The presence of company did not
interrupt his systematic methods. He would say to such:

"Gentlemen, I must beg leave of absence this forenoon. Here are books,
music, and amusements; consider yourselves at home, and be happy."

But Washington was not allowed to remain long in private life. In 1787,
a convention assembled in Philadelphia to form a confederacy of States.
Washington was a member of that body, and was unanimously made its
presiding officer. The convention sat four months, in which time the
confederacy of States was consummated, called the United States, with
the present Constitution essentially.

This new order of things required the election of a president, and
Washington was unanimously elected. He was inaugurated on the thirtieth
day of April, 1789, in the city of New York, then the seat of
government. That the position was not one of his own seeking is quite
evident from a letter which he wrote to General Knox:

"My movements to the chair of government will be accompanied by feelings
not unlike those of a culprit who is going to the place of his
execution, so unwilling am I, in the evening of life, nearly consumed in
public cares, to quit a peaceful abode for an ocean of difficu