at home and abroad was immense. Yet
no letter was unanswered. One of the best-bred men of his time,
Washington deemed it a grave offense against the rules of good manners
and propriety to leave letters unanswered. He wrote with great facility,
and it would be a difficult matter to find another who had written so
much, who had written so well. General Harry Lee once observed to him,
"We are amazed, sir, at the vast amount of work you get through."
Washington answered, "Sir, I rise at four o'clock, and a great deal of
my work is done while others sleep."

He was the most punctual of men, as we said. To this admirable quality
of rising at four and retiring to rest at nine at all seasons, this
great man owed his ability to accomplish mighty labors during his long
and illustrious life. He was punctual in everything, and made everyone
about him punctual. So careful a man delighted in always having about
him a good timekeeper. In Philadelphia the first President regularly
walked up to his watchmaker's to compare his watch with the regulator.
At Mount Vernon the active yet punctual farmer invariably consulted the
dial when returning from his morning ride, and before entering his
house.

The affairs of the household took order from the master's accurate and
methodical arrangement of time. Even the fisherman on the river watched
for the cook's signal when to pull in shore and deliver his catch in
time for dinner.

Among the picturesque objects on the Potomac, to be seen from the
eastern portion of the mansion house, was the light canoe of the house's
fisher. Father Jack was an African, an hundred years of age, and
although enfeebled in body by weight of years, his mind possessed
uncommon vigor. And he would tell of days long past, when, under African
suns, he was made captive, and of the terrible battle in which his royal
sire was slain, the village burned, and himself sent to the slave ship.

Father Jack had in a considerable degree a leading quality of his
race--somnolency. Many an hour could the family of Washington see the
canoe fastened to a stake, with the old fisherman bent nearly double
enjoying a nap, which was only disturbed by the jerking of the white
perch caught on his hook. But, as we just said, the domestic duties of
Mount Vernon were governed by clock time, and the slumbers of fisher
Jack might occasion inconvenience, for the cook required the fish at a
certain hour, so that they might be served smoking hot pr