“The memory of his faintest tone,
In the deep midnight came upon her soul,
And cheered the passing hours so sad, so lone,
As on they rolled.”
Thirty months numbered themselves among eternity’s uncounted years, and it became apparent to all that another death-scene was to be enacted, and the lonely occupant of the room above that other chamber of death, was reaching the goal of its long felt desire. The gentle spirit was striving to free itself, and the glad light in the dim eye asserted the pleasure experienced in the knowledge of the coming change.
For many months Mrs. Washington had been growing more gloomy and silent than ever before, and the friends who gathered about her called her actions strange and incomprehensible. She stayed much alone, and declined every offer of company, but the last days of her life she seemed more cheerful and contented. When the end came on that bright, spring morning in 1801 she gave her blessing to all about her, and sank quietly to rest, in the seventy-first year of her age, and the third of her widowhood.
Her resting-place beside her husband is, like Mecca and Jerusalem, the resort of the travellers of all nations, who, wandering in its hallowed precincts, imbibe anew admiration and veneration for the immortal genius, whose name is traced in imperishable remembrance in the hearts of his grateful countrymen. Side by side their bodies lie crumbling away, while their spirits have returned to their Author. The placid Potomac kisses the banks of that precious domain, and the ripple of the receding waves makes pleasant music all day along the shore of Mount Vernon.
The temptation to see this historic and romantic home of the most beloved of the nation’s dead was not to be resisted, and one winter day in company with one of the few surviving relatives who bear that honored name, the start was made from Washington. Although the weather was cold and disagreeable, with a threatening aspect of a snow-storm, we found the little vessel filled with pilgrims, bound to the tomb of Washington. This trip is one of intense interest, and particularly since the events of the civil war have given to all the locality additional attraction. Arlington, Alexandria, and Fort Washington! what memories are stirred by mention of these names, and how acute is remembrance when we stand face to face with these places. The old commonwealth is dear to every generous American, whether of northern or southern birth, but more especially to the people of the South, whose ancestors fondly termed it the “motherland.”
It was the quaint look of the place which appealed strongest to the senses, and the fact that it is long past a century old, its foundation having been laid in 1748. The boat anchored at Alexandria, and we gazed wistfully up those streets through which Washington had often passed, and looked in vain to see some “vast and venerable pile, so old it seemed only not to fall,” but the residences of most of the old inhabitants are the abodes of wealth, and they exhibit evidences of care and preservation.
Alexandria was early a place of some note, for five colonial governors met here by appointment, in 1755, to take measures with General Braddock respecting his expedition to the West. “That expedition proceeded from Alexandria, and tradition still points to the site on which now stands the olden Episcopal Church (but then, in the woods), as the spot where he pitched his tent, while the road over the western hills by which his army withdrew, long bore the name of this unfortunate commander. But the reminiscences which the Alexandrians most cherish are those which associate their town with the domestic attachments and habits of Washington, and the stranger is still pointed to the church of which he was vestryman; to the pew in which he customarily sate; and many striking memorials of his varied life are carefully preserved.”