ds:

"There are times when favors conferred make a greater impression than at
others, for, though I have received many, I hope I have not been unmindful
of them; yet that, at a time your popularity was at the highest and mine
at the lowest, and when it is so common for men's resentments to run up
high against those, who differ from them in opinion, you should act with
your wonted kindness towards me, has affected me more than any favor I
have received; and could not be believed by some in New York, it being
above the run of common minds."

In behalf of another member of the family, threatened with confiscation,
he wrote to a member of the House of Delegates, "I hope, I trust, that no
act of Legislation in the State of Virginia has affected, or can affect,
the properly of this gentleman, otherwise than in common with that of
every good and well disposed citizen of America," and this was sufficient
to put an end to the project At the close of the war he wrote to this
absentee, "There was nothing wanting in [your] Letter to give compleat
satisfaction to Mrs. Washington and myself but some expression to induce
us to believe you would once more become our neighbors. Your house at
Belvoir I am sorry to add is no more, but mine (which is enlarged since
you saw it), is most sincerely and heartily at your service till you could
rebuild it. As the path, after being closed by a long, arduous, and
painful contest, is to use an Indian metaphor, now opened and made smooth,
I shall please myself with the hope of hearing from you frequently; and
till you forbid me to indulge the wish, I shall not despair of seeing you
and Mrs. Fairfax once more the inhabitants of Belvoir, and greeting you
both there the intimate companions of our old age, as you have been of our
younger years." And to another he left a token of remembrance in his will.

One of the most curious circle of friends was that composed of Indians.
After his mission among them in 1753, Washington wrote to a tribe and
signed himself "your friend and brother." In a less general sense he
requested an Indian agent to "recommend me kindly to Mononcatoocha and
others; tell them how happy it would make Conotocarius to have an
opportunity of taking them by the hand." A little later he had this
pleasure, and he wrote the governor, "the Indians are all around teasing
and perplexing me for one thing or another, so that I scarce know what I
write." When Washington left the frontier t