cuted, whether little or much of it is done--and it
is said, the same attention ought to be given to Peter (& I suppose to
Sarah likewise) or the Stockings will be knit too small for those for
whom they are intended; such being the idleness, & deceit of
those people."

"What kind of sickness is Betty Davis's?" he demands on another
occasion. "If pretended ailments, without apparent causes, or visible
effects, will screen her from work, I shall get no work at all from
her;--for a more lazy, deceitful and impudent huzzy is not to be found
in the United States than she is."

"I observe what you say of Betty Davis &ct," he wrote a little later,
"but I never found so much difficulty as you seem to apprehend in
distinguishing between _real_ and _feigned_ sickness;--or when a person
is much _afflicted_ with pain.--Nobody can be very sick without having a
fever, nor will a fever or any other disorder continue long upon any one
without reducing them.--Pain also, if it be such as to yield entirely to
its force, week after week, will appear by its effects; but my people
(many of them) will lay up a month, at the end of which no visible
change in their countenance, nor the loss of an oz of flesh, is
discoverable; and their allowance of provision is going on as if nothing
ailed them."

He not only deemed his negroes lazy, but he had also a low opinion of
their honesty. Alexandria was full of low shopkeepers who would buy
stolen goods from either blacks or whites, and Washington declared that
not more than two or three of his slaves would refrain from filching
anything upon which they could lay their hands.

[Illustration: Spinning House--Last Building to the Right]

[Illustration: The Butler's House and Magnolia Set out by Washington the
Year of his Death]

He found that he dared not leave his wine unlocked, because the servants
would steal two glasses to every one consumed by visitors and then
allege that the visitors had drunk it all.

He even suspected the slaves of taking a toll from the clover and
timothy seed given them to sow and adopted the practice of having the
seed mixed with sand, as that rendered it unsalable and also had the
advantage of getting the seed sown more evenly.

Corn houses and meat houses had to be kept locked, apples picked early,
and sheep and pigs watched carefully or the slaves took full advantage
of the opportunity. Nor can we at this distant day blame them very much
or wax so indignant as di