o
understand the thought of those on the other. Every community evolves
its own spirit not easily to be apprehended by the onlooker. The state
of society in America was vitally different from that in England. The
plain living of Virginia was in sharp contrast with the magnificence
and ease of England. It is true that we hear of plate and elaborate
furniture, of servants in livery, and much drinking of Port and Madeira,
among the Virginians: They had good horses. Driving, as often they did,
with six in a carriage, they seemed to keep up regal style. Spaces were
wide in a country where one great landowner, Lord Fairfax, held no less
than five million acres. Houses lay isolated and remote and a gentleman
dining out would sometimes drive his elaborate equipage from twenty to
fifty miles. There was a tradition of lavish hospitality, of gallant men
and fair women, and sometimes of hard and riotous living. Many of the
houses were, however, in a state of decay, with leaking roofs, battered
doors and windows and shabby furniture. To own land in Virginia did
not mean to live in luxurious ease. Land brought in truth no very large
income. It was easier to break new land than to fertilize that long in
use. An acre yielded only eight or ten bushels of wheat. In England the
land was more fruitful. One who was only a tenant on the estate of Coke
of Norfolk died worth 150,000 pounds, and Coke himself had the income of
a prince. When Washington died he was reputed one of the richest men in
America and yet his estate was hardly equal to that of Coke's tenant.

Washington was a good farmer, inventive and enterprising, but he had
difficulties which ruined many of his neighbors. Today much of his
infertile estate of Mount Vernon would hardly grow enough to pay
the taxes. When Washington desired a gardener, or a bricklayer, or a
carpenter, he usually had to buy him in the form of a convict, or of
a negro slave, or of a white man indentured for a term of years. Such
labor required eternal vigilance. The negro, himself property, had no
respect for it in others. He stole when he could and worked only when
the eyes of a master were upon him. If left in charge of plants or of
stock he was likely to let them perish for lack of water. Washington's
losses of cattle, horses, and sheep from this cause were enormous. The
neglected cattle gave so little milk that at one time Washington, with a
hundred cows, had to buy his butter. Negroes feigned sickness