own fire, he wrote or read two or three hours by candle-light.
After a frugal breakfast of two small cups of tea and four small cakes
of Indian meal, he mounted his horse, and rode about his plantations;
seeing to every thing with his own eye, and often lending a helping
hand. This duty done, he returned to the house at noon, and dined
heartily, as well beseemed the active, robust man that he was, yet
never exceeding the bounds of temperance and moderation both as to
eating and drinking. His afternoons he usually devoted to the
entertainment of his numerous guests, who thronged his hospitable
mansion almost daily, and, if from a distance, abiding there for weeks
together. After a supper frugal as his breakfast, if there was no
company in the house, he would read aloud to his family from some
instructive and entertaining book, or from the newspapers of the day;
and then, at an early hour, retire to his room for the night.

Fish and game abounded in the woods and streams of his domain, as well
as in those of the adjoining plantations; and he was thus enabled to
indulge his fondness for angling and hunting to the utmost, whenever
he felt so inclined. Two or three times a week, the shrill winding of
the hunter's horn and the deep-mouthed baying of the fox-hounds would
ring out on the clear morning air; when he might be seen at the head
of a brilliant company of mounted hunters, dashing over the fields,
across the streams, and through the woods, hot on the heels of some
unlucky Reynard. I should not say unlucky, however; for although
Washington was as bold and skilful a rider as could be found in
thirteen provinces, and kept the finest of horses and finest of dogs,
yet, for all that, he could seldom boast of any great success as a
fox-hunter. But having the happy knack of making the best and most of
every thing, be it toward or untoward, he always consoled himself with
the reflection, that, if they had failed to catch their fox, they at
least had their sport and a deal of healthful exercise; which, after
all, should be the only object of fox-hunting. On such occasions, he
was either joined by the neighboring gentry, or by such guests as
chanced at the time to be enjoying the hospitalities of Mount Vernon.
Among these, it was not unusual to find old Lord Fairfax, the friend
and companion of his stripling days, who would come down from Greenway
Court several times a year, with a long train of hunters and hounds,
and by his pr