ation upon honorable terms, that it had
been denied us, that all our attempts after peace had proved abortive,
and had been grossly misrepresented, that we had done everything which
could be expected from the best of subjects, that the spirit of
freedom rises too high in us to submit to slavery, and that, if
nothing else would satisfy a tyrant and his diabolical ministry, we
are determined to shake off all connections with a state so unjust and
unnatural. This I would tell them, not under covert, but in words as
clear as the sun in its meridian brightness.

III

TO THE MARQUIS DE CHASTELLUX ON HIS MARRIAGE[28]

My Dear Marquis: In reading your very friendly and acceptable letter,
which came to hand by the last mail, I was, as you may well suppose,
not less delighted than surprized to meet the plain American words,
"my wife." A wife! Well, my dear Marquis, I can hardly refrain from
smiling to find you are caught at last. I saw by the eulogium you
often made on the happiness of domestic life in America, that you had
swallowed the bait, and that you would as surely be taken, one day or
another, as that you were a philosopher and a soldier.

[Footnote 28: From a letter, written at Mount Vernon on April 25,
1788, and addrest to the Marquis de Chastellux, author of "Travels in
North America," and a major-general in the army of Rochambeau, who
served under Washington in the American Revolution.]

So your day has at length come. I am glad of it, with all my heart and
soul. It is quite good enough for you. Now you are well served for
coming to fight in favor of the American rebels, all the way across
the Atlantic Ocean, by catching that terrible contagion, domestic
felicity, which, like the smallpox or the plague, a man can have only
once in his life, because it commonly lasts him (at least with us in
America; I know not how you manage these matters in France), for his
whole lifetime. And yet, after all, the worst wish which I can find in
my heart to make against Madame de Chastellux and yourself is that you
may neither of you ever get the better of this same domestic felicity,
during the entire course of your mortal existence.

If so wonderful an event should have occasioned me, my dear Marquis,
to write in a strange style, you will understand me as clearly as if I
had said, what in plain English is the simple truth, "Do me the
justice to believe that I take a heartfelt interest in whatsoever
concerns your happin