ters, and he was shortly in
that condition when he felt that the entire universe depended upon him.
He blacked his shoes at least twenty times, and marched back and
forth in the yard with such portentous importance that the servants
instinctively shrunk away from his august presence. One of the children,
in their frolics, ran against him; George Washington simply said, "Git
out my way," and without pausing in his gait or deigning to look at him,
slapped him completely over.

A maid ventured to accost him jocularly to know why he was so finely
dressed. George Washington overwhelmed her with a look of such infinite
contempt and such withering scorn that all the other servants forthwith
fell upon her for "interferin' in Unc' George Wash'n'ton's business." At
last the Major entered the garden and bade George Washington follow
him; and George Washington having paid his twentieth visit to the
dining-room, and had a final interview with the liquor-case, and having
polished up his old beaver anew, left the office by the side door,
carrying under his arm a mahogany box about two feet long and one foot
wide, partially covered with a large linen cloth. His beaver hat was
cocked on the side of his head, with an air supposed to be impressive.
He wore the Major's coat and flowered velvet waistcoat respecting which
he had won so signal a victory in the morning, and he flaunted a large
bandanna handkerchief, the ownership of which he had transferred still
more recently. The Major's orders to George Washington were to convey
the box to the garden in a secret manner, but George Washington was far
too much impressed with the importance of the part he bore in the affair
to lose the opportunity of impressing the other servants. Instead,
therefore, of taking a by-path, he marched ostentatiously through the
yard with a manner which effected his object, if not his master's,
and which struck the entire circle of servants with inexpressible awe.
However, after he gained the garden and reached a spot where he was no
longer in danger of being observed by any one, he adopted a manner
of the greatest secrecy, and proceeded to the place selected for the
meeting with a degree of caution which could not have been greater had
he been covertly stealing his way through a band of hostile Indians. The
spot chosen for the meeting was a grass plot bounded on three sides
by shrubbery and on the fourth by the wall of the little square within
which had been laid