The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1917-02-27

heavy armor of reserve within which he afterward shut himself against a curious world. We catch him off his guard now, and yet unaware that posterity is looking at him. In fine, we can take snapshot of him at time when he still has no thought that he is standing before the camera
 of fame.
 This period of his life gives. us our l last good chance to see the' human
 Washington. We can see even his
 heart beat as he writhes in the throes
 Of first love.
 Like his patron, Lord Fairfax, the young surveyor is suffering from a grievous hurt to his affections and is signing like furnace for a 1oWland
 beauty to history unknown. The eye of the love-sick youth is caught bv a. girl at Lord Fairfax's, but as the 1 burnt child dreads the fire he dares not. risk a. second assault upon his wounded breast.
 Writing to another boy he confides his wish to escape entirely from the society of the cruel sex and to bury his "chast and troublesome Passion in the grave of oblivion or eternal forgetfulness' In anguish of soul from "Cupidss feather'd dart" he groans in rhyme to 70, ye Gods," and Iwails over
 Her that's pityless of my griefs and | woes
 And will not on me pity take.
 Though torn in his bosom by the heartlessness of the "Lowland Beau ty" and wary of the little girl at his
 lordship's he yet writes an acrostic to a third girl. But he stops most lprovokingly when he has spelled out f'Frances Alexa'' and leaves us only to guess whether No. was Miss Alexander.
 | The unlucky lover found in change of scenes the best medicine
 that can be prescribed for such an
 ailment Mounting his horse, he rode
 away over the Blue Ridge to survey
 the lands of Lord Fairfax and to for
 get the coy, uncertain girls he left behind him..
 Contrary to the conventional story, Washington was not, reared in the. lap
 of luxury but of Mother Nature. The rude frontier was his training school, l just as it was of Jackson and llln- l coin, and many another hardy char acter in our history.
 1 For the Fairfax estate in the valley of Virginia was in the wild west of 1 that oIden day. As surveyor ana 1 soldier, Washington passed much or | the next 10, years in the yet savage wilderness between the Shenandoah l and Ohio rivers.
 When he entered upon this life he was a mere tentlerfoot, and the 1 first night in the forest he undressed | for bed as usual, oy very orderly, l as he said in the journal which he kept. But to his surprise he found his bed to be only pile of straw, 1 with an old blanket which 1ntroduc- 1 ed him to such restless sleeping com panions-he playfully described ! them as "game"-that he was soon l glad to get up, put on his clothes ana l lie on the ground, like the more ex- perienced woodsmen in his party. The next day he recorded sensible promise always henceforth to sleep in ye open air before fire" sometimes a tent was pitched, but more than once it was carried quite of with ye wind," when he Twas ob:- liged to lie ye latter part of the night without covering In one long, cold wintry period he did not take off his clothes or sleep in a bed more than three or four nights After trampfng all day, he and his mates curled themselves on a heap of hay, Hike a parcel of dogs or catts,' all sleeping together under bearsl1ins, "and hap py's he that gets the birth nearest the fre.''
 His table was as primitive as his bed. It's only cloth was the woodland carpet; it's plates were chips, and he cooked his food on forked sticks over a brushwood fire. Yet he felt well rewarded for all his labors and pri- vations when he ~Jingled the Spanish gold he drew as wages. and found that ia dubloon is my constant gain every day. and sometimes "six pi;,- toles." t
 Indians in their war paint still roamed the forests of the Virginia frontier, and the boy soon met band of them as they came from battle, but with only one scalp" Making friends with the warriors. they treat ed him to a war dance, which they went through to the weird music SUD- piled by drumming on a deerskin stretched tight over a pot half filled with water, and by rattling a gourd with buckshot in it.
 After several years, mostly spent in roughing it, George was called away from his surveying by the mortal ill., ness of his brother Lawrence, and he sailed with the invalid to Barbados in quest of health. On that West In- dian island he saw a theatrical play for the first time, and he also had the misfortune to catch smallpox, which left his face pitted the rest of his days.
 With the death of Lawrence, Mt. Vernon fell to George, but he had hardly begun to farm when he heard again the call of the frontier wilder ness. The French coming down from Canada and he English pushing out from Virginia and Pennsylvania were now face to face in the neighborhood of the big, present day city of Pitts burgh.
 There, by the Ohio, the two ad- vancing Nations clashed. just as in our day France and England have clashed at Fashoda in Africa, just as Germany and France came into col- lision in Morocco and just as we have seen the coxetous empires com ing to swords point in unsettled lands everywhere. And just as these seat tered conflicts have resulted in the world war now raging, so the strife between the outposts on the Ohio ended in the Seven Years War.
 As the clouds of that war began to gather, the royal governor of vir- ginia thought to dispel the brewing