in directing that, if there were general
distress, poor persons of the neighborhood should have help from his
kitchen or his granaries.

His own more immediate hospitality was of the same kind. He always
entertained in the most liberal manner, both as general and President,
and in a style which he thought befitted the station he occupied. But
apart from all this, his table, whether at home or abroad, was never
without its guest. "Dine with us," he wrote to Lear on July 31, 1797,
"or we shall do what we have not done for twenty years, dine alone."
The real hospitality which opens the door and spreads the board for
the friend or stranger, admitting them to the family without form or
ceremony, was his also. "My manner of living is plain," he wrote to
a friend after the Revolution; "I do not mean to be put out of it. A
glass of wine and a bit of mutton are always ready; and such as will
be content to partake of them are always welcome. Those who expect
more will be disappointed, but no change will be effected by
it." Genuine hospitality as unstinted as it was sincere was not
characteristic of a cold man, or of one who sought to avoid his
fellows. It is one of the lighter graces of life, perhaps, but when it
comes freely and simply, and not as a vehicle for the display or the
aggrandizement of its dispenser, it is not without a meaning to the
student of character.

Washington was not much given to professions of friendship, nor was he
one of the great men who keep a circle of intimates and sometimes of
flatterers about them. He was extremely independent of the world and
perfectly self-sufficing, but it is a mistake to suppose that because
he unbosomed himself to scarcely any one, and had the loneliness of
greatness and of high responsibilities, he was therefore without
friends. He had as many friends as usually fall to the lot of any man;
and although he laid bare his inmost heart to none, some were very
close and all were very dear to him. In war and politics, as has
already been said, the two men who came nearest to him were Hamilton
and Knox, and his diary shows that when he was President he consulted
with them nearly every day wholly apart from the regular cabinet
meetings. They were the two advisers who were friends as well as
secretaries, and who followed and sustained him as a matter of
affection as much as politics. At home his neighbor, George Mason,
although they came to differ, was a strong friend whom he liked