The leader-enterprise. [volume] (Fitzgerald, Ga.) 1912-1915, 1913-06-20


have laid aside book that was read;
turned from it as quietly as he had
turned from receiving the surrender OF
CORVALLIS at Observation-Disclosures In
victory, not as pageant and field OF
glory, but only as means to an
end.
He looked to find very sweet salts
faction in the peace which war had
earned, as sufficient a scope for his
powers at home az in the field.
Once more he would be Virginian,
and Join his strength to his neigh
bors' in all the tasks Of good eth
zenship.
He had seen nothing Of the old
familiar places since that rar-away
spring in the yeart177b, when he had
left his farming and his fox-hunting,
amidst rumors Of war, to attend the
congress which was to send him to
Cambridge. He had halted at Fred
ericksburg, indeed, with the Count de
Rochambeau, two. years ago., ere he
followed his army from York to its
posts upon the Hudson.
Mrs. Lewis, his sister, had returned
one day from visiting a neighbor In
the quiet town to look in establishment
upon an officers horses and attend
ants, at her door, and had entered to
find her beloved brother stretched
upon her own bed within, sound asleep
In his clothes, like boy returned from
hunting.
Takes His Mother TO Ball.
There had been formal ball given,
too, in celebration Of the victory, be-
fore the French officers and the COM
mander-in-chief left Fredericksburg to
go northward again, and Washington
had had the joy of entering the room
in the face of the gay company with
his aged mother on his arm, not whit
bent for all her seventy-four years,
and as quiet as queen at receiving
the homage Of her sons comrades in
arms.
He had got his imperious spirit of
command from her. A servant had
told her that MARS George" had put
up at the tavern.
GO and tell George to come here in
stantly," she had commanded, and he
had come, masterful man though he
was.
He had felt every old affection and
every old allegiance renew itself as he
saw former neighbors crowd around
him; and that little glimpse of Vir-
ginia had refreshed him like tonic
deeply, and as If it renewed his very
nature, as only silent man can be re-
freshed. But few days in Fredericks-
burg and at Mount Vernon then had
been only an incident of campaigning,
only a grateful pause on a march.
Back to Private Life.
| Now at last he had come back to
keep his home and be a neighbor
again, as he had not been these nine
years.
1t was not the same Virginia, nor
even the same home and neighborhood
he had gone from, that Washington
came back to when the war was
done.
He had left Mount Vernon in the
care of Lund Washington, his nephew,
while the war lasted, and had not for
gotten amidst all his letter writing to
send seasonable directions and main
tain a constant oversight upon the
management of his estate.
Rebukes His Nephew.
It was part of his genius to find time
for everything, and Mount Vernon had
suffered something less than the or
binary hazards and neglects of war.
1t had suffered less upon one occa-
sion, indeed, than it's proud owner
could have found it in his heart to
wish.
In the spring of 1881 several British
vessels had come pillaging within the
Potomac, and the anxious Lund had
RECALLED their officers with refresh
ments from Mount Vernon to buy
them off from mischief. ut would have
been a less painful circumstance to
me-" his uncompromising uncle mad
written him, ito have heard that, in
consequence of your noncompliance
with their request, they had burnt
my house and laid the plantation in
ruin. You ought to have considered
yourself as my representative.
Kept though it was from harm,
however, the place had suffered many
things for lack of his personal care.
There was some part of the task to
be over again that had confronted him
when he came to take possession of
the old plantation with his bride after
the neglects of the French war.
Finds Virginia State.
But Virginia was more changed than
Mount Vernon. He had left it a col
ony, at odds with a royal governor;
he returned to find it state, with
BENJAMIN Harrison, that stout gentle
man and good planter, for governor,
by the free suffrage of his fellow Vir-
ginians.
There had been no radical break
with the aristocratic traditions OF the
past. Mr.. Harrison's handsome seat
at Lower Brandon lay where the long
reaches of the James marked the old
est regions of Virginia's life upon
broad. half-feudal estates; where there
wora pood wine and nlate uDOn the