father.

"Ordered, that Mr. Livingston, Mr. Sherburne, and Mr. Murray, be
appointed a committee pursuant to the said resolution."

As chairman of the committee, Mr. Livingston wrote to young Lafayette as
follows:--

"SIR: Actuated by motives of gratitude to your father, and eager to
seize every opportunity of showing their sense of his important
services, the house of representatives have passed the resolution
which I have the pleasure to communicate. The committee being
directed to inquire into the fact of your arrival within the United
States, permit me to advise your immediate appearance at this
place, that the legislature of America may no longer be in doubt,
whether the son of Lafayette is under their protection, and within
the reach of their gratitude.

"I presume to give this advice as an individual personally attached
to your father, and very solicitous to be useful to any person in
whose happiness he is interested. If I should have that good
fortune on this occasion, it will afford me the greatest
satisfaction."

This letter, and the resolutions of the house of representatives, young
Lafayette forwarded to President Washington, and asked his advice as to
the course he should pursue. Washington advised him to come to
Philadelphia at the opening of the next session of Congress, occupy a
room in his house, but to avoid society as much as possible. He
complied, and remained in Philadelphia until the following spring, when
Washington, on becoming a private citizen, embraced the son of his
friend as if he had been his own child, and bore him to his home on the
Potomac. There he remained until early in October, when the joyful news
of the release of his father from confinement, and his restoration to
his country and friends, caused him to leave for the seaboard to depart
for France. He and M. Frestel sailed from New York on the twenty-sixth
of October, 1797.

As young Lafayette was about to leave Mount Vernon, Washington placed a
letter in his hands for his father, in which he said:--

"From the delicate and responsible situation in which I stood as a
public officer, but more especially from a misconception of the
manner in which your son had left France, till explained to me in a
personal interview with himself, he did not come immediately into
my family on his arrival in America, though he was assured, in