“Five-and-twenty years have nearly passed away since I have considered myself as permanently residing at this place, or have been in a situation to indulge myself in a familiar intercourse with my friends by letter or otherwise. During this period, so many important events have occurred, and such changes in men and things have taken place, as the compass of a letter would give you but an inadequate idea of; none of which events, however, nor all of them together, have been able to eradicate from my mind the recollection of those happy moments, the happiest of my life, which I have enjoyed in your company.
“Worn out in a manner by the toils of my past labor, I am again seated under my vine and fig-tree, and I wish I could add that there are none to make us afraid; but those whom we have been accustomed to call our friends and allies are endeavoring, if not to make us afraid, yet to despoil us of our property, and are provoking us to acts of self-defence which may lead to war. What will be the result of such measures, time, that faithful expositor of all things, must disclose. My wish is to spend the remainder of my days, which can not be many, in rural amusements, free from the cares from which public responsibility is never exempt.
“Before the war, and even while it existed, although I was eight years from home at one stretch, except the en-passant visits made to it on my marches to and from the siege of Yorktown, I made considerable additions to my dwellinghouse, and alterations in my offices and gardens; but the dilapidation occasioned by time, and those neglects which are coextensive with the absence of proprietors, have occupied as much of my time within the last twelve months, in repairing them, as at any former period in the same space; and it is a matter of sore regret, when I cast my eyes toward Belvoir, which I often do, to reflect that the former inhabitants of it, with whom we lived in such harmony and friendship, no longer reside there, and that the ruins can only be viewed as the memento of former pleasures.”
But, at the very time when he wrote this letter, the clouds of difficulty between the United States and France were thickening; a storm of war was evidently brewing, and the mutterings of the thunder were becoming more and more audible. In that hour of gloom, when the billows were beating heavily upon the ship of state, and the hurricane began to howl, his countrymen, remembering the faith, and fortitude, and courage, and skill, of their venerated pilot for eight years of commotion, turned anxious eyes and more anxious hearts toward Mount Vernon, wishing to call him from his retirement to face once more the enemies of their country; yet tenderly hesitating, because they loved him too well to disturb unnecessarily the needed repose he was then enjoying. A crisis came; dangers thickened on every side, and the united voices of his countrymen again called Washington into public life.
FOOTNOTES:
[121] Sparks's Life and Writings of Washington, xi. 197, note.
[122] MS. letter quoted by Irving, v. 276.
[123] Recollections and Private Memoirs of Washington, by George Washington Parke Custis, page 41. Washington wrote many other letters to his sprightly foster-child, but they have been lost or destroyed. These serve to show how his comprehensive mind had moments of thought and action to bestow on all connected with him, and how deeply his affections were interested in the family of his wife, who were cared for as if they were his own. They were written at a time when the cares of state, as president of the republic, were pressing heavily upon him.
[124] Life of Washington, v. 279.