ixty-nine pounds; the
stud fee for "Steady" was sixty pounds. In other words, the accounts in
these years were in depreciated paper and utterly worthless for our
purposes. Washington himself gave the puzzle up in despair toward the
end of the war and paid his manager in produce, not money.

We of to-day have, in fact, not the faintest conception of the blessing
we enjoy in a uniform and fairly stable monetary system. Even before the
days of the "Continentals" there was depreciated paper afloat that had
been issued by the colonial governments and, unless the fact is
definitely stated, when we come upon figures of that period we can never
be sure whether they refer to pounds sterling or pounds paper, or, if
the latter, what kind of paper. People had to be constantly figuring the
real value of Pennsylvania money, or Virginia money or Massachusetts
money, and one meets with many such calculations on the blank leaves of
Washington's account books. Even metallic money was a Chinese puzzle
except to the initiated, there were so many kinds of it afloat. Among
our Farmer's papers I have found a list of the money that he took with
him to Philadelphia on one occasion--6 joes, 67 half joes, 2
one-eighteenth joes, 3 doubloons, 1 pistole, 2 moidores, 1 half moidore,
2 double louis d'or, 3 single louis d'or, 80 guineas, 7 half guineas,
besides silver and bank-notes.

The depreciation of the paper currency during the Revolution proved
disastrous to him in several ways. When the war broke out much of the
money he had obtained by marriage was loaned out on bond, or, as we
would say to-day, on mortgage. "I am now receiving," he soon wrote, "a
shilling in the pound in discharge of Bonds which ought to have been
paid me, & would have been realized before I left Virginia, but for my
indulgences to the debtors." In 1778 he said that six or seven thousand
pounds that he had in bonds upon interest had been paid in depreciated
paper, so that the real value was now reduced to as many hundreds. Some
of the paper money that came into his hands he invested in government
securities, and at least ten thousand pounds of these in Virginia money
were ultimately funded by the federal government for six thousand two
hundred and forty-six dollars in three and six per cent. bonds.

And yet, by examining Washington's accounts, one is able to estimate in
a rough way the returns he received from his estate, landed and
otherwise. We find that in ten months of