the incision which was made in a very
large and painful tumor on the protuberance of my thigh. This prevents
me from walking or sitting. However, the physician assures me it has had
a happy effect in removing my fever, and will tend very much to the
establishment of my general health." As late as the eighth of September
he wrote to Doctor Craik, saying:

"Though now freed from pain, the wound given by the incision is not
yet healed."

Before he had fairly recovered, the president heard of the death of his
mother, who expired at Fredericksburg, on the twenty-fifth of August, at
the age of little more than eighty-two years, forty-six of which she had
passed in widowhood. The event was touchingly alluded to in the pulpits
of New York; and at the first public _levees_ of the president, after
her death was known, members of the two houses of Congress and other
persons wore badges of mourning.

When Washington had fully recovered, he resumed his labors for the
public good with the greatest ardor. The Congress had been chiefly
employed, meanwhile, in framing laws necessary to the organization of
the government. The most important of these, in the senate, was an act
for the establishment of a judiciary, and in the house of
representatives an act providing a revenue by an imposition of
discriminating duties upon imports. The latter subject had received the
earliest attention of the house, for, in the condition in which the new
government found the national finances, it was an all-important one. Mr.
Madison brought it to the attention of Congress, only two days after the
inauguration, by a suggestion, in the first committee of the whole on
the state of the Union, to adopt a temporary system of imposts, by which
the exhausted treasury might be replenished. Upon the questions which
this proposition gave birth to, long and able debates ensued, in which
the actual state of the trade, commerce, and manufactures of the country
were quite fully developed. From the published reports of these debates
Washington collated a mass of facts which aided him much in his future
labors, and in drawing conclusions concerning public measures. An act
for the collection of revenue through the medium of imposts was finally
passed, and the principle was recognised of discriminating duties for
the protection of American manufactures. The plan then adopted became
the basis of our present revenue system.

Another important question that enga