when you return to Versailles. In these
wishes and most respectful compliments, Mrs. Washington joins me."

Notwithstanding Washington's retirement was so perfect as to amount to
positive isolation for a month or more, on account of the effects of an
intensely severe winter, which closed almost every avenue to Mount
Vernon, and suspended even neighborly intercourse, he found it
extremely difficult to divest himself of the habits of the camp.
"Strange as it may seem," he wrote to General Knox on the twentieth of
February, "it is nevertheless true, that it was not till lately I could
get the better of my usual custom of ruminating, as soon as I waked in
the morning, on the business of the ensuing day; and of my surprise at
finding, after revolving many things in my mind, that I was no longer a
public man, nor had anything to do with public transactions.

"I feel now, however, as I conceive a wearied traveller must
do, who, after treading many a painful step with a heavy
burthen on his shoulders, is eased of the latter, having
reached the haven to which all the former were directed; and
from his house-top is looking back, and tracing with an
eager eye the meanders by which he escaped the quicksands
and mires which lay in his way; and into which none but the
all-powerful Guide and Dispenser of human events could have
prevented his falling."

Surely, if ever a man had cause for serenity of mind while taking a
retrospect of his public and private life, it was George Washington.
From his youth he had walked in the path of truth and rectitude, and
throughout his long public career of about thirty years, at the time of
his retirement from the army, not a stain of dishonor--not even the
suspicion of a stain--had ever been seen upon his character. His moral
escutcheon was bright, his conscience was unqualifiedly approving, his
country loved him above all her sons. With a sincere desire to spend the
remainder of his days as a simple farmer upon the Potomac, without the
ambition of being famous, or the expectation of being again called into
public life, he resumed his old domestic habits, and prepared for the
enjoyment of the evening of his days undisturbed by the turmoils of
society around him.

"My manner of living is plain," he wrote to a friend, "and I do not mean to
be put out by it. A glass of wine and a bit of mutton are always ready, and
such as will be content to partake