the same
brooding sense of peace and quietness which one feels at Mt. Vernon or
at Arlington, the city of our nation's dead.

* * * * *

SOMETHING OF GEORGE WASHINGTON'S
BOYHOOD

ANONYMOUS

From _The Evangelist_

George Washington was born at a time when savagery had just departed
from the country, leaving freshness and vigor behind. The Indian had
scarcely left the woods, and the pirate the shore near his home. His
grandfather had seen his neighbor lying tomahawked at his door-sill, and
his father had helped to chase beyond the mountains the whooping savages
that carried the scalps of his friends at their girdle. The year his
brother was born, John Maynard's ship had sailed up the James River with
the bloody head of Blackbeard hanging to the bowsprit.

He had only one uncle, a brother Lawrence, and a cousin Augustine, all
older than he, but the youngest of his older brothers was twelve years
of age when George was born, while his cousin Augustine was only four
years older, and his cousin Lawrence six years older than himself. When
he was seven years old his sister Betty was a little lass of six. Two
brothers, Samuel and John, were nearing their fourth and fifth
birthdays. Charles, his baby brother, was still in his nurse's arms.
Early the shadow of death crossed his boyish path, for his baby sister,
Mildred, born soon after he was seven, died before he was nine.

The first playmate Washington had, out of his own immediate family, was
another Lawrence Washington, a very distant cousin, who lived at Chotauk
on the Potomac, and who, with his brother, Robert Washington, early won
Washington's regard, and kept it through life. When Washington made his
will he remembered them, writing, "to the acquaintances and friends of
my juvenile years, Lawrence Washington and Robert Washington, I give my
other two gold-headed canes having my arms engraved on them."

It was at Chotauk, with Lal and Bob Washington, that George Washington
first met with traffic between the old world and the new. There was no
money used except tobacco notes, which passed among merchants in London
and Amsterdam as cash. Foreign ships brought across the ocean goods that
the Virginians needed, and the captains sold the goods for these tobacco
notes. Much of Washington's time was spent with these boys, and when he
grew old he recalled the young eyes of the Chotauk lads, as they, with
him, had stood on the river-bank vai