in
poetry?" suggested his friend.

"Exactly so; and you are the only person in the world to whom I have
spoken of the affair."

We have introduced this incident to show the tender side of George's
heart. His gravity, decorum, and thoughtful habit were such as almost to
preclude the possibility of his being captivated by a "lowland beauty."
But this incident shows that he was much like the average boy of
Christendom in this regard.

Irving says: "Whatever may have been the reason, this early attachment
seems to have been a source of poignant discomfort to him. It clung to
him after he look a final leave of school in the autumn of 1747, and
went to reside with his brother Lawrence at Mount Vernon. Here he
continued his mathematical studies and his practice in surveying,
disturbed at times by recurrences of his unlucky passion. Though by no
means of a poetical temperament, the waste pages of his journal betray
several attempts to pour forth his amorous sorrows in verse. They are
mere common-place rhymes, such as lovers at his age are apt to write, in
which he bewails his

"'Poor, restless heart,
Wounded by Cupid's dart;'

and 'bleeding for one who remains pitiless of his griefs and woes.'

"The tenor of some of the verses induce us to believe that he never told
his love; but, as we have already surmised, was prevented by his
bashfulness.

"'Ah, woe is me, that I should love and conceal!
Long have I wished and never dare reveal.'

"It is difficult to reconcile one's self to the idea of the cool and
sedate Washington, the great champion of American liberty, a woe-worn
lover in his youthful days, 'sighing like a furnace,' and inditing
plaintive verses about the groves of Mount Vernon. We are glad of an
opportunity, however, of penetrating to his native feelings, and finding
that under his studied decorum and reserve _he had a heart of flesh
throbbing with the warm impulses of human nature_."

In another place, Irving refers to the affair again, and furnishes the
following bit of information:

"The object of this early passion is not positively known. Tradition
states that the 'lowland beauty' was a Miss Grimes of Westmoreland,
afterwards Mrs. Lee, and mother of General Henry Lee, who figured in
Revolutionary times as Light Horse Harry, and was always a favorite with
Washington, probably from the recollections of his early tenderness for
the mother."

George, as we have already intimated, s