d supplied her with everything she
needed, and, as these things often came through third parties, it is
pretty certain she did not know the source; at any rate she accepted
everything quite as her due, and shows a half-comic ingratitude that is
very fine.

When Washington started for New York to be inaugurated President, he
stopped to see her. She donned a new white cap and a clean apron in honor
of the visit, remarking to a neighbor woman who dropped in that she
supposed "these great folks expected something a little extra." It was the
last meeting of mother and son. She was eighty-three at that time and "her
boy" fifty-five. She died not long after.

Samuel Washington, the brother two years younger than George, has been
described as "small, sandy-whiskered, shrewd and glib." Samuel was married
five times. Some of the wives he deserted and others deserted him, and two
of them died, thus leaving him twice a sad, lorn widower, from which
condition he quickly extricated himself. He was always in financial
straits and often appealed to his brother George for loans. In Seventeen
Hundred Eighty-one we find George Washington writing to his brother John,
"In God's name! how has Samuel managed to get himself so enormously in
debt?" The remark sounds a little like that of Samuel Johnson, who on
hearing that Goldsmith was owing four hundred pounds exclaimed, "Was ever
poet so trusted before?"

Washington's ledger shows that he advanced his brother Samuel two thousand
dollars, "to be paid back without interest." But Samuel's ship never came
in, and in Washington's will we find the debt graciously and gracefully
discharged.

Thornton Washington, a son of Samuel, was given a place in the English
army at George Washington's request; and two other sons of Samuel were
sent to school at his expense. One of the boys once ran away and was
followed by his uncle George, who carried a goodly birch with intent to
"give him what he deserved"; but after catching the lad the uncle's heart
melted, and he took the runaway back into favor. An entry in Washington's
journal shows that the children of his brother Samuel cost him fully five
thousand dollars.

Harriot, one of the daughters of Samuel, lived in the household at Mount
Vernon and evidently was a great cross, for we find Washington pleading as
an excuse for her frivolity that "she was not brung up right, she has no
disposition, and takes no care of her clothes, which are dabbed about in