devoted to his grief until years wore out the memory.

III. THE SELF-PITY AND SENTIMENTALISM OF YOUTH

Those who like their hero to be of chiseled marble may be shocked to think that George Washington, “the father of his Country,” wrote pages in his journal of foolish love-sighs and more foolish poetry. He often bewailed his “poor restless heart, wounded by Cupid’s dart,” and wrote of this wounded heart as “bleeding for one who remains pitiless to my griefs and woes.” That he never had a confidant to whom he could tell his sacred heart-burnings is indicated by the lines:

But such experiences let George Washington come a little closer to us as a real boy, and is consolation for many a man who had a like foolish spell in his youth.

George not only kept a tell-tale diary, which has given us all we know of his inner life in youth, but he wrote letters in that journal to many persons. Whether those letters were imaginary or were actually copies of real letters we do not know. Some of these were written while visiting the Fairfax family of Belvoir, after Lord Fairfax had come there from England as the head of the family interests. He wrote to his “dear friend Robin”: “My residence is at present at his lordship’s, where I might, was my heart disengaged, pass my time very pleasantly, as there’s a very agreeable young lady lives in the same house; but, as that’s only adding fuel to the fire, it makes me the more uneasy, for, by often and unavoidably being in company with her, revives my former passion for your Lowland Beauty; whereas, was I to live more retired from young women, I might in some measure alleviate my sorrows by burying that chaste and troublesome passion in the grave of oblivion.”

The “lowland beauty” he refers to is said to have been Miss Grimes, of Westmoreland, who, as Mrs. Lee, became the mother of General Henry Lee, famous in revolutionary times as Light Horse Harry, and always a favorite with General Washington.

Lord Fairfax, to whom he often refers, had a strong influence on his life. This real nobleman had inherited through his mother the Virginia lands granted to Lord Culpepper by Charles II. Having been jilted at the altar, in the very height of a rather famous career, by a lady who had a chance to marry a duke, Lord Fairfax renounced society and left England for Virginia. He took a great liking to young George Washington and they became companions on many a fox-hunt.

Presently it became necessary for Lord Fairfax to have his lands surveyed, and Washington, having studied surveying, was chosen for this task. The boy, though now man’s size, was not yet seventeen when he undertook this very responsible work. But here his careful training served him well. Nothing was ever undertaken by him until it had been thoroughly thought out, and success was thus assured in this his first man-making task. He still kept his journal day by day, but it was now full of the business of life. The emotional dreams of his Lowland Beauty are recorded no more.

This escape from self-pity and individual sentimentalism is in line with Edison’s advice to get busy at something useful if you would avoid temptation and foolishness. Even one so sternly set as Washington needed to have his attention occupied with something to do, as employment for idle hands, in order to be free from devil-ideas sowing artificial interests in the growing mind.

CHAPTER III
THE BEGINNINGS OF EXPERIENCE IN BORDER WARFARE

I. GETTING USED TO ROUGHING IT

From the aristocratic tables and home comforts of Mount Vernon and Belvoir, the youthful Washington began roughing it in the forests and along the streams of the Shenandoah. He had begun to adapt himself to the primitive conditions of his country and to share the coarse fare of the commoners that composed the civilization of the new world.

To one of his friends, he wrote: “I have not slept more than three or four nights in a bed, but, after walking a good deal all day, I have lain down before the fire upon a little straw or fodder, or a bearskin, whichever was to be had, with man, wife and children, like dogs and cats; and happy is he who gets the berth nearest the fire.”

He wrote in his note-book that he received, when in active service, a doubloon per day, which was $7.20 in gold and worth much more than that correspondingly at that time. These first wages are in sharp contrast to those received by Lincoln, and the preparation for life coming to the two men was as notably different as their mission and as their times.

Soon after this, Washington, though only a boy, was appointed official surveyor for the government, and so accurate were his surveys that they have ever remained the undisputed authority. Meantime, he had an eye to the practical, and, as a result, the choicest parts of the Shenandoah Valley came into possession of the Washingtons and remained with them for many generations.

The able and talented young gentleman was frequently for long periods the guest of Lord Fairfax, after Lord Fairfax had moved from Belvoir to his “quarters” beyond the Blue Ridge, which he had made into a spacious new home named Greenway Court. All the culture of England was gathered there and nothing was failing to give the young man a clear idea of the social and political conditions of the world.

World history has much to do in making individual history and so it was with Washington. England and France were rivals and at war. The war came to a close, and, so anxious was each for peace, that they settled their home differences and left to the future their rivalry for territory in North America. It then became a race for them, who could occupy and defend territory the most rapidly. The vast overlapping claims ran down from the Saint Lawrence River to the Ohio River and on to the Mississippi.

French explorers had certainly been the first to pass through that region and map out the territory, but the English had occupied the eastern coast and given land titles that ran west to the setting sun. Evidently, the mother countries had settled their differences in Europe only to turn their energies to securing and fortifying their claims in the new world.

Strange indeed is the course of destiny. The revolutionary grandmothers used to recite a very vague stanza which ran as follows:

At least, England lost most of its possessions in North America, France lost all, and a little nation appeared that was the cradle of liberty for mankind and the unsurpassable maker of a greater world.

II. LAND SPECULATION AS THE BEGINNING LEADING TO AMERICAN SELF-GOVERNMENT

We may reasonably find a beginning of the American republic, involving the career of George Washington, in the formation of what is known as the Ohio Company. If this company had been formed of unscrupulous speculators, as were other big franchises granted by kings, it could well have been a near-relative to the get-rich-quick manias that present so queer a view of