did not come to
my hands sooner; but I request, in pointed terms, if the matter is now in
agitation in your Assembly, that all proceedings on it may be stopped, or
in case of a decision in her favor, that it may be done away and repealed
at my request."

Still greater mortification was in store for him, when he was told that
she was borrowing and accepting gifts from her neighbors, and learned "on
good authority that she is, upon all occasions and in all companies,
complaining ... of her wants and difficulties; and if not in direct terms,
at least by strong innuendoes, endeavors to excite a belief that times
are much altered, &c., &c., which not only makes _her_ appear in an
unfavorable point of view, but _those also_ who are connected with her."
To save her feelings he did not express the "pain" he felt to her, but he
wrote a brother asking him to ascertain if there was the slightest basis
in her complaints, and "see what is necessary to make her comfortable,"
for "while I have anything I will part with it to make her so;" but
begging him "at the same time ... to represent to her in delicate terms,
the impropriety of her complaints, and _acceptance_ of favors, even when
they are voluntarily offered, from any but relations." Though he did not
"touch upon this subject in a letter to her," he was enough fretted to end
the renting of her plantation, not because "I mean ... to withhold any aid
or support I can give from you; for whilst I have a shilling left, you
shall have part," but because "what I shall then give, I shall have credit
for," and not be "viewed as a delinquent, and considered perhaps by the
world as [an] unjust and undutiful son."

In the last years of her life a cancer developed, which she refused to
have "dressed," and over which, as her doctor wrote Washington, the "Old
Lady" and he had "a small battle every day." Once Washington was summoned
by an express to her bedside "to bid, as I was prepared to expect, the
last adieu to an honored parent," but it was a false alarm. Her health was
so bad, however, that just before he started to New York to be inaugurated
he rode to Fredericksburg, "and took a final leave of my mother, never
expecting to see her more," a surmise that proved correct.

Only Elizabeth--or "Betty"--of Washington's sisters grew to womanhood, and
it is said that she was so strikingly like her brother that, disguised
with a long cloak and a military hat, the difference between them was
sc