Page:Woman in Art.djvu/345

WOMAN IN ART item, as the servants were clothed in the main from fabrics of home manufacture—and the daily direction of the household kept her constantly occupied.

Typical of her force of character and her rigid discipline was the rebuke she administered to an overseer who presumptuously departed from her directions and followed his own judgment upon some matter of work. When arraigned for the offense, he made the insolent reply, "Madam, in my judgment the work has been done to better advantage than if I had followed your directions." A withering flash of her eyes fell upon the offender, with the imperious question: "And, pray, who gave you the right to exercise any judgment in the matter? I command you, sir; there is nothing left for you but to obey." He was dismissed at once, and tradition relates that when telling his friends of his misfortune he declared that when he "met the blue lightning of Madam Washington's glance he felt exactly as if he had been knocked down."

"Before leaving home for the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, with a recognition of the deadly strife that the nation was entering upon, and with tender forethought for his aging mother, her son induced her to leave the lonely country home and remove to Fredericksburg. There in a comfortable house, surrounded by her most cherished home furnishings and attended by a housekeeper and three colored servants, she spent her remaining years. Her garden was her delight. Here she watched, with a mother's interest, the political problems and turmoils incident to the adjusting of the new nation. She was much in the open air, driving daily in the "park phaeton" (an importation from London), or walking the mile to her daughter's home aided by her gold-headed cane, which had become a necessity in advancing years, her maid Patty, whose turban handkerchief towered in a top-lofty structure, carrying an extra wrap and the little basket of needlework or knitting for her mistress, the dignified, gray-haired Stephen coming in the evening with the chaise to fetch her home. An incident pictures the respect inculcated in the children of those times. "When Madam Washington appeared in the streets of Fredericksburg in her phaeton driven by the pompous Stephen, or taking her daily walk, her progress became an ovation, for everyone, from the gray-haired old man to the thoughtless boy, lifted his hat to the mother of Washington."

"Upon the Lewis estate overlooking the valley of the Rappahannock was a favorite spot which she afterward selected for her burial. She would sometimes stop there to rest, and seated upon a flat boulder would meditate while 269