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 THE WIFE OF GEOEGE WASHINGTON. 259 « take some trouble to teach such girls their duty, they would observe a gradual improvement. There is a tradition in Virginia that Mrs. Washington, with all her good qualities, was a little tart in her temper, and favored the General, occasionally, with nocturnal dis- course, too much in the style of Mrs. Caudle. The story rests upon the slightest foundation, and it is safe to dis- regard it. Great housekeepers, however, are not usually noted for amiability of disposition, and ladies whose husbands are very famous, are apt to be overrun with company, which is not conducive to domestic peace ; nor does it tend to curb the license of a woman's tongue to remember that, at her marriage, she brought her husband a vast increase, both of his estate, and of his importance in the social system. How far George Washington was, in his youth, from anticipating the splendid career that awaited him ! He was by no means so favored in fortune and family, as his biographers would have us believe. Every reader, I sup- pose, remembers the fine tale, which even Mr. Irving repeats, of the youthful Washington, getting a midship- man's commission and yielding it again to his mother's tears. There lay the British man-of-war at anchor in the river. The boat was on the shore ; the lad's trunk was packed ; and, I think, his uniform was on. But, at the last moment, the tender youth, overcome by his mother's tears, declined to go. Such is the romance. The truth was this : His mother, left a widow, was anxious for the future of her boy, fourteen years of age, whose only inheritance was a farm and tract of land on the Rappahannock, of no great value or promise. She was advised to send the lad to sea, before the mast, in one of the tobacco ships that so often ascended the broad rivers of Virginia. She was for a while disposed to favor the scheme. But her brother,