the painter,
dragged it ashore. Leaping then from his horse, he wrenched the
fowling-piece from the astonished poacher, and fell to belaboring him
in so clean and handsome a manner, as to make the unlucky wight
heartily wish he had the wide Potomac between him and the terrible man
whose iron grasp was then on his collar. My word for it, he never
trespassed again on those forbidden grounds; and I dare be sworn, he
never saw or ate or smelt a canvas-back thereafter, without feeling a
lively smarting up and down under his jacket, and, it may be, his
buckskin breeches too. It was not that a few dozen or even a hundred
ducks had been shot on his premises, that Washington was thus moved to
chastise this fellow; but that, in spite of wholesome warnings, he
should go on breaking the laws of the land with such impunity; and
also, that, instead of seeking to earn an honest livelihood by the
labor of his hands, he should prefer rather to live in idleness, and
gain a bare subsistence by such paltry and unlawful means.

Although verging on to middle age, Washington was still very fond of
active and manly sports, such as tossing the bar and throwing the
sledge, wrestling, running, and jumping; in all of which he had but
few equals, and no superiors. Among other stories of his strength and
agility, there is one which you may come across some day in the course
of your reading, relating how that, at a leaping-match, he cleared
twenty-two feet seven inches of dead level turf at a single bound.

Notwithstanding his modesty and reserve, he took much pleasure in
society, and ever sought to keep up a free and social interchange of
visits between his family and those of his neighbors. Besides their
fine horses and elegant carriages, he, and others of the old Virginia
gentry of that day whose plantations lay along the Potomac, kept their
own barges or pleasure-boats, which were finished and fitted up in a
sumptuous style, and were sometimes rowed by as many as six negro men,
all in neat uniforms. In these, they, with their wives and children,
would visit each other up and down the river; and often, after
lengthening out their calls far into the night, would row home by the
light of the moon, which, lending charms that the sun had not to the
tranquil flow of the winding stream, and to the waving woods that
crowned the banks on either hand, caused them often to linger, as
loath to quit the enchanting scene. A few weeks of the winter months
wer