harge, "My children,
love one another!"

Finally, 'twas his charity which disposed him to continual
applications for, and benedictions on those that he met withal; he had
an heart full of good wishes and a mouth full of kind blessings for
them. And he often made his expressions very wittily agreeable to the
circumstances which he saw the persons in. Sometimes when he came into
a family, he would call for all the young people in it, that so he
might very distinctly lay his holy hands upon every one of them, and
bespeak the mercies of heaven for them all.

WILLIAM BYRD

Born in Virginia in 1674, died, in 1744; educated in England
and the Netherlands; visited the court of France; chosen a
Fellow of the Royal Society; receiver-general of the revenue
in Virginia and three times colonial agent for Virginia in
England; for thirty-seven years member, and finally
president, of the Council of Virginia; his home in Virginia
the famous ancestral seat called Westover.

AT THE HOME OF COLONEL SPOTSWOOD[14]

Sept., 1732. Colonel Spotswood's enchanted castle is on one side of
the street, and a baker's dozen of ruinous tenements on the other,
where so many German families had dwelt some years ago; but are now
removed ten miles higher, in the Fork of Rappahannock, to land of
their own. There had also been a chapel about a bow-shot from the
colonel's house, at the end of an avenue of cherry trees, but some
pious people had lately burned it down, with intent to get another
built nearer to their own homes. Here I arrived about three o'clock,
and found only Mrs. Spotswood at home, who received her old
acquaintance with many a gracious smile. I was carried into a room
elegantly set off with pier glasses, the largest of which came soon
after to an odd misfortune. Amongst other favorite animals that
cheered this lady's solitude, a brace of tame deer ran familiarly
about the house, and one of them came to stare at me as a stranger.
But unluckily spying his own figure in the glass, he made a spring
over the tea-table that stood under it, and shattered the glass to
pieces, and falling back upon the tea-table made a terrible fracas
among the china.

[Footnote 14: From "A Progress to the Mines," the date of the visit
being 1732, which was the year in which Washington was born. Byrd's
work is one of several admired writings by Byrd, now known
collectively as the "Westover Manuscripts." Colonel