e you
that in this detail no mention is made of any portion of time allotted
for reading. The remark would be just, for I have not looked into a
book since I came home; nor shall I be able to do it until I have
discharged my workmen; probably not before the nights grow longer,
when possibly I may be looking in Doomsday book."

There is not much that can be added to his own concise description of
the simple life he led at home. The rest and quiet were very pleasant,
but still there was a touch of sadness in his words. The long interval
of absence made the changes which time had wrought stand out more
vividly than if they had come one by one in the course of daily life
at home. Washington looked on the ruins of Belvoir, and sighed to
think of the many happy hours he had passed with the Fairfaxes, now
gone from the land forever. Other old friends had been taken away
by death, and the gaps were not filled by the new faces of which he
speaks to McHenry. Indeed, the crowd of visitors coming to Mount
Vernon from all parts of his own country and of the world, whether
they came from respect or curiosity, brought a good deal of weariness
to a man tired with the cares of state and longing for absolute
repose. Yet he would not close his doors to any one, for the Virginian
sense of hospitality, always peculiarly strong in him, forbade such
action. To relieve himself, therefore, in this respect, he sent
for his nephew Lawrence Lewis, who took the social burden from
his shoulders. But although the visitors tired him when he felt
responsible for their pleasure, he did not shut himself up now any
more than at any other time in self-contemplation. He was constantly
thinking of others; and the education of his nephews, the care of
young Lafayette until he should return to France, as well as the
happy love-match of Nellie Custis and his nephew, supplied the human
interest without which he was never happy.

Before we trace his connection with public affairs in these
closing years, let us take one look at him, through the eyes of a
disinterested but keen observer. John Bernard, an English actor,
who had come to this country in the year when Washington left the
presidency, was playing an engagement with his company at Annapolis,
in 1798. One day he mounted his horse and rode down below Alexandria,
to pay a visit to an acquaintance who lived on the banks of the
Potomac. When he was returning, a chaise in front of him, containing a
man and a