in which it did not cleave and cling to you
with the warmest affection; and it must cease to beat ere it
can cease to wish for your happiness, above anything on
earth.

"Your faithful and tender husband, G. W."

"'Seventy-six!" The words bring a thrill even now, yet, in the midst
of those stirring times, not a fortnight before the Declaration was
signed, and after twenty years of marriage, he could write her like
this. Even his reproaches are gentle, and filled with great
tenderness.

And so it went on, through the Revolution and through the stormy days
in which the Republic was born. There were long and inevitable
separations, yet a part of the time she was with him, doing her duty
as a soldier's wife, and sternly refusing to wear garments which were
not woven in American looms.

During the many years they lived at Mount Vernon, they attended divine
service at Christ Church, Alexandria, Virginia, one of the quaint
little landmarks of the town which is still standing. For a number of
years he was a vestryman of the church, and the pew occupied by him is
visited yearly by thousands of tourists while sight-seeing in the
national Capitol. Indeed all the churches, so far as known, in which
he once worshipped, have preserved his pew intact, while there are
hundreds of tablets, statues, and monuments throughout the country.

In the magnificent monument at Washington, rising to a height of more
than 555 feet, the various States of the Union have placed stone
replicas of their State seals, and these, with other symbolic devices,
constitute the inscriptions upon one hundred and seventy-nine of these
memorial stones. Not only this, but Europe and Asia, China and Japan
have honoured themselves by erecting memorials to the great American.

When at last his long years of service for his country were ended, he
and his beloved wife returned again to their beautiful home at Mount
Vernon, to wait for the night together. The whole world knows how the
end came, with her loving ministrations to the very last of the three
restful years which they at this time spent together at the old home,
and how he looked Death bravely in the face, as became a soldier and a
Christian.

The Old and the New

Grandmother sat at her spinning wheel
In the dust of the long ago,
And listened, with scarlet dyeing her cheeks,
For the step she had learned to know.
A courtly lover,