or at Mount
Vernon both as a friend and in a professional capacity, and Washington
declared that he would rather trust him than a dozen other doctors. Few
men were so close to the great man as he, and he was one of the few who
in his letters ventured to tell chatty matters of gossip. Thus, in
August, 1791, he wrote a letter apropos of the bad health of George A.
Washington and added: "My daughter Nancy is there [Mt. Vernon] by way of
Amusement awhile. She begins to be tired of her Fathers house and I
believe intends taking an old Batchelor Mr. Hn. for a mate shortly."
Another young lady, Miss Muir, who had recently gone to Long Island for
the benefit of the sea baths was "pursued" by a Mr. Donaldson and the
latter now writes that "he shall bring back a wife with him." Craik was
a thorough believer in Washington's destiny, and in the dark days of the
Revolution would hearten up his comrades by the story of the Indian
chieftain met upon the Ohio in 1770 who had vainly tried to kill
Washington in the battle of the Monongahela and had finally desisted in
the belief that he was invulnerable.

To friends, family, church, education and strangers our Farmer was
open-handed beyond most men of his time. His manager had orders to fill
a corn-house every year for the sole use of the poor in the neighborhood
and this saved numbers of poor women and children from extreme want. He
also allowed the honest poor to make use of his fishing stations,
furnishing them with all necessary apparatus for taking herring, and if
they were unequal to the task of hauling the seine, assistance was
rendered them by the General's servants.

To Lund Washington he wrote from the camp at Cambridge: "Let the
hospitality of the house, with respect to the poor, be kept up. Let no
one go hungry away. If any of this kind of people should be in want of
corn, supply their necessaries, provided that it does not encourage them
to idleness; and I have no objection to you giving my money in charity
to the amount of forty or fifty pounds a year, when you think it well
bestowed. What I mean by having no objection is, that it is my desire it
should be done. You are to consider that neither _myself nor wife_ is
now in the way to do these good offices."

His relations with his own kindred were patriarchal in character. His
care of Mrs. Washington's children and grandchildren has already been
described. He gave a phaeton and money to the extent of two thousand
five hun