on!' I exclaimed; and then drawing back with a stare of wonder,
'Have I the honor of addressing General Washington?' With a smile
whose expression of benevolence I have rarely seen equaled, he offered
his hand and replied: 'An odd sort of introduction, Mr. Bernard; but
I am pleased to find you can play so active a part in private, and
without a prompter.'" So they rode on together to the house and had a
chat, to which we must recur further on.

There is no contemporary narrative of which I am aware that shows
Washington to us more clearly than this little adventure with Bernard,
for it is in the common affairs of daily life that men come nearest
to each other, and the same rule holds good in history. We know
Washington much better from these few lines of description left by
a chance acquaintance on the road than we do from volumes of state
papers. It is such a pleasant story, too. There is the great man,
retired from the world, still handsome and imposing in his old age,
with the strong and ready hand to succor those who had fallen by the
wayside; there are the genuine hospitality, the perfect manners, and
the well-turned little sentence with which he complimented the actor,
put him at his ease, and asked him to his house. Nothing can well be
added to the picture of Washington as we see him here, not long before
the end of all things came. We must break off, however, from the quiet
charm of home life, and turn again briefly to the affairs of state.
Let us, therefore, leave these two riding along the road together in
the warm Virginia sunshine to the house which has since become one of
the Meccas of humanity, in memory of the man who once dwelt in it.

The highly prized retirement to Mount Vernon did not now, more than
at any previous time, separate Washington from the affairs of the
country. He continued to take a keen interest in all that went on,
to correspond with his friends, and to use his influence for what he
thought wisest and best for the general welfare. These were stirring
times, too, and the progress of events brought him to take a more
active part than he had ever expected to play again; for France,
having failed, thanks to his policy, to draw us either by fair words
or trickery from our independent and neutral position, determined,
apparently, to try the effect of force and ill usage. Pinckney, sent
out as minister, had been rebuffed; and then Adams, with the cordial
support of the country, had made anoth