sport, she would place a chapeau on her head, and throw a
military cloak over her shoulders, she might easily have been mistaken
for the chief."[131]

It was the wish of Nelly that her foster-father should wear, on that
occasion, the splendidly-embroidered uniform which the board of general
officers had adopted as the costume of the commander-in-chief of the
armies of the United States, but he could not be persuaded to wear a
suit bedizened with tinsel. He preferred the plain old continental blue
and buff, and the modest, black-ribbon cockade. Magnificent white
plumes, which General Pinckney had presented to him, he gave to the
bride; and to the Reverend Thomas Davis, rector of Christ church,
Alexandria, who performed the marriage ceremony, he presented an elegant
copy of Mrs. Macaulay's History of England, in eight octavo volumes,
saying, when he handed them to him: "These, sir, were written by a
remarkable lady, who visited America many years ago; and here is also
her treatise on the _Immutability of Moral Truth_, which she sent me
just before her death. Read it, and return it to me."

With characteristic modesty, Washington made no allusion to the fact
that Mrs. Macaulay (Catharine Macaulay Graham) crossed the Atlantic, in
the spring of 1785, for no other purpose, as she avowed, than to see the
great leader of the American armies, whom she revered as a second
Moses.[132]

During the spring, Washington made preparations for changes and
improvements in his estate. He appeared at times to feel that the end of
his earthly pilgrimage was near. In a letter written to Mr. M'Henry in
March, after alluding to the inconvenience of leaving home, on public
business, on account of the demands upon his attention by his private
affairs, he said: "This is not all, nor the worst; for, being the
executor, the administrator, and trustee, for others' estates, my
greatest anxiety is to leave all these concerns in such a clear and
distinct form, that no reproach may attach itself to me when I shall
have taken my departure for the land of spirits."

In April, he surveyed with his own hands, and made a chart of some lands
belonging to him near Alexandria, which he bequeathed to the late Mr.
Custis. "To complete this," he wrote, "employed nearly three days."[133]

In July, he wrote and executed his last will and testament. It was
written entirely by himself; and at the bottom of each page of the
manuscript he signed his name in full--GE