Sure enough, it was but a short time until romance came to Mount Vernon, and Miss Nelly changed her mind very promptly. Lawrence Lewis arrived, the clouds of doubt vanished, and the love-bells were set to ringing until the wedding-bells took up the melody that passed on into the music of the spheres.
II. CROWNED IN THE FULLNESS OF TIME 1799
The beginning of the year 1799 was full of the romantic happiness of immortal youth for the household of Washington, but the close of the year brought to an end the career of the first great American. On the twelfth of December he rode as usual around the estate at Mount Vernon, and was caught in a sleety rain. From this he developed acute laryngitis and died on the night of the fourteenth. He said, “I die hard but I am not afraid to go,” and his last words were, “’Tis well.”
His loved ones were around him and his last look was lovingly upon them. The doctor saw his countenance change in death. He put his hands over the eyes out of which the light had forever gone, and one of the noblest souls of the earth passed away. There was not a struggle or a sigh.
Mrs. Washington was sitting at the foot of the bed, and she asked bravely, “Is he gone?”
The doctor could not speak, but he held up his hand as a sign that the spirit of their beloved was no longer there.
“’Tis well,” she said, repeating his last words. “All is now over; I shall soon follow him; I have no more trials to pass through.”
The tributes of America and the world to his honor and his name may be noted in the words of Lord Brougham, an eminent British statesman, who reflected the feeling of the nation against which he had waged a successful war: “It will be the duty of the historian, and the sage of all nations,” he said, “to let no occasion pass of commemorating this illustrious man, and, until time shall be no more, will a test of the progress which our race has made in wisdom and virtue be derived from the veneration paid to the immortal name of Washington.”
The great nations having any sort of democratic ideal fully recognized the fact that in his death had passed away one of the great men of the earth. The English Channel fleet lowered their ships’ flags at half-mast in token of respect, and in the land of Napoleon, who was then master of France, there was crepe draped about all their standards. Talleyrand, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and one of the greatest orators and statesmen, prepared a report to the French government in which he said: “A nation which some day will be a great nation, and which today is the wisest and happiest on the face of the earth, weeps at the bier of a man whose courage and genius contributed most to free it from bondage and elevated it to the rank of an independent and sovereign power. The regrets caused by the death of this great man, the memories aroused by these regrets, and a proper veneration for all that is held dear and sacred by mankind, impel us to give expression to our sentiments by taking part in an event which deprives the world of one of its brightest ornaments, and removes to the realm of history one of the noblest lives that ever honored the human race.