"I wonder if Mr. I. left a wife behind to languish for that peculiar expression? If not—"
I checked these roving thoughts as incompatible with former ideas.
The steamboat was puffing and blowing, and giving a scream now and then. It began to tremble—it veered and made a slow plunge down the river. The decks were crowded with ladies and gentlemen—all smiling happy—that seeming to be overjoyed to have the pleasure of coming with me.
The Potomac River is just lovely. All the trees along its banks were budding and feathering out with greenness. We passed by a town. Then a great round heap of stone walls, that they called the Fort. The grass was green around it, and some soldiers came out on the walls to look at us as we swept by.
It was pleasant; I felt the occasion to be something like that on which that Egyptian woman went down the River Nile in a row boat; so I lowered my parasol as we passed the Fort.
At last the steamboat made a dead stop in the river. We were right opposite Mount Vernon. I looked at the sacred old place from the water. It was lovely in itself, standing there on a high knoll, carpeted with soft spring grass, and with tall trees a-bending over it. The sunshine lay on the water and the shore, but that old house was a good deal in shadow, and all the more pleasant for that.
Some smaller boats came up to the steamboat. We got into them and went ashore.
LIX.
MOUNT VERNON.
