[Footnote 1: Ford, XIII, 377.]

In a few days he returned to Mount Vernon and there indulged himself
in a leisurely survey of the plantation. He rode from one farm to
another and reacquainted himself with the localities where the various
crops were either already springing or would soon be. Indoors there
was an immense volume of correspondence to be attended to with the
aid of Tobias Lear, the faithful secretary who had lived with the
President during the New York and Philadelphia periods. When the
letters were sorted, many answers had to be written, some of which
Washington dictated and others he wrote with his own hand. He admits
to Secretary McHenry that, when he goes to his writing table to
acknowledge the letters he has received, when the lights are brought,
he feels tired and disinclined to do this work, conceiving that the
next night will do as well. "The next night comes," he adds, "and with
it the same causes for postponement, and so on." He has not had time
to look into a book. He is dazed by the incessant number of new faces
which appear at Mount Vernon. They come, he says, out of "respect"
for him, but their real reason is curiosity. He practises Virginian
hospitality very lavishly, but he cannot endure the late hours. So he
invites his nephew, Lawrence Lewis, to spend as much time as he can
at Mount Vernon while he himself and Mrs. Washington go to bed early,
"soon after candle light." Lewis accepted the invitation all the more
willingly because he found at the mansion Nelly Custis, a pretty and
sprightly young lady with whom he promptly fell in love and married
later. Nelly and her brother George had been adopted by Washington
and brought up in the family. She was his particular pet. Like other
mature men he found the boys of the younger generation somewhat
embarrassing. I suppose they felt, as well they might, a great and
awful gulf yawning between them. "I can govern men," he would say,
"but I cannot govern boys."[1] With Nelly Custis, however, he found it
easy to be chums. No one can forget the mock-serious letter in which
he wrote to her in regard to becoming engaged and gave her advice
about falling in love. The letter is unexpected and yet it bears every
mark of sincerity and reveals a genuine vein in his nature. We must
always think of Nelly as one of the refreshments of his older life and
as one of its great delights. He considered himself an old man now.
His hair no longer needed powder; years and