Page:The Ladies of the White House.djvu/69

Rh source of joy, rather than of regret, that there was but one Washington, either by the ties of consanguinity or the will of Providence. This character was never marred by any imperfect type of its own, and in Washington's life we recognize the fact that occasionally, in great emergencies, God lifts up a man for the deed; when the career is ended, the model, though not the example, is lost to the world.

Mrs. Washington's two children (Martha and John Parke Custis) were with her the bright years of her life intervening between her marriage and the Revolution. Her daughter was fast budding into woman-hood, and how beautiful, thought the loving mother, were the delicate outlines of her fair young face! Airy castles and visionary scenes of splendor reared their grand proportions in the twilight-clouds of her imagination; and in the sunlight of security she saw not, or, if perchance did define, the indistinct outlines of the spectre, grim and gaunt, heeded not its significant appearance at her festive board.

In all the natural charms of youth, freshness, and worldly possessions, the mother's idol, the brother's play-mate, and father's cherished daughter, died, and the light of the house went out, and a wail of anguish filled the air as the night winds rushed hurryingly past that desolate home on the shore of the murmuring river.

A great purpose was born out of that grief: a self-abnegated firmness to rise above the passionate lamentations of selfish sorrow; and thoucrh afterward, for