ary academy. A copy of this paper he
transmitted to the commander-in-chief, with a request that he would give
it his consideration. To this Washington replied:--

"The establishment of an institution of this kind, upon a
respectable and extensive basis, has ever been considered by me as
an object of primary importance to this country; and, while I was
in the chair of government, I omitted no proper opportunity of
recommending it, in my public speeches and otherwise, to the
attention of the legislature. But I never undertook to go into a
detail of the organization of such an academy; leaving this task to
others, whose pursuit in the path of science, and attention to the
arrangement of such institutions, had better qualified them for the
execution of it. For the same reason, I must now decline making any
observations on the details of your plan; and, as it has already
been submitted to the secretary of war, through whom it will
naturally be laid before Congress, it might be too late for
alterations, if any should be suggested. I sincerely hope that the
subject will meet with due attention, and that the reasons for its
establishment, which you have so clearly pointed out in your letter
to the secretary, will prevail upon the legislature to place it
upon a permanent and respectable footing."

FOOTNOTES:

[130] The young man alluded to was the late George Washington Parke
Custis, of Arlington House, Virginia, who lived to become the last
surviving executor of Washington's will, and who died at his seat, on
the tenth of October, 1857, when in the seventy-seventh year of his age.
Mr. Custis prepared for the press a series of articles concerning the
public and private life of his foster-father, which the present writer
arranged, annotated, and published, under the title of "Recollections
and Private Memoirs of Washington, by his Adopted Son." In that work is
given a series of letters, composing portions of a correspondence
between Washington and young Custis, during the period when the latter
was in college, first at Princeton, in New Jersey, and then at
Annapolis, in Maryland. From Washington's letters the following extracts
have been taken, to show the parental solicitude which he felt for this
talented but somewhat wayward boy, who was the idol of his grandmother,
Mrs. Washington:--

"PHILADELPHIA, _15th November, 1796._