[As they sing the darkies move towards background. The voices grow fainter and fainter. The scene ends.
COSTUMES
LORD FAIRFAX. Plum-colored velvet. Three-cornered black hat. White wig with cue.
GEORGE WASHINGTON. Frontiersman's suit of cotton khaki, made on Indian lines, with Indian tunic, and knee-breeches. Tan stockings, with strappings of khaki wound round them, and moccasins.
MADAM WASHINGTON. Dark green quilted petticoat. Overdress and bodice of dark green, flowered in old rose. Elbow sleeves. White ruffles of lace. White lawn fichu. Powdered hair.
The plantation negroes wear tropically bright colors. All the colors are solid. Aunt Rachel has a bright blue dress with a white apron and kerchief, and a black cloak across her shoulders. She wears a scarlet and yellow turban, and huge gold hoops in her ears. The negro girls wear red and blue and green cotton dresses with white kerchiefs, and colored aprons—a yellow apron with a red dress, and so on. Some of them wear gay little turbans. Their feet are bare. The boys wear black knee-breeches, and bright-colored shirts, open at the neck. Uncle Ned wears black knee-breeches, low black shoes, and a faded scarlet vest with gilt buttons opening over a soft white shirt.
[GEORGE WASHINGTON'S FORTUNE]
(Founded on a legend of him youth.
CHARACTERS
GEORGE WASHINGTON, a Youthful Surveyor
Young Lads who serve respectfully as "chainmen" and "pilots"
RICHARD GLENN
JAMES TALBOT
KEITH CARY
A FRONTIERSMAN
RED ROWAN, his daughter
SCENE: An open woodland glade that is part of the wilderness portion of Lord Fairfax's estate beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia, 1748. Trees at right, left, and background. Trailing vines. Low bushes. Underfoot a carpet of rotting leaves. At the left, near foreground, a fire smolders. Near it are spread a bearskin used as a sleeping-blanket, some pine boughs, surveyors' tools, and a tin box. At the right a fallen tree-trunk, mossed, vine-covered. The time is mid-afternoon. The lads who enter wear the garb of frontiersmen; but when the play begins the forest glade is deserted until Richard Genn's voice is heard from the woods in background.