And yet there were gleams of joy and gladness. "About candlelight" on his birthday in 1799 Nelly Custis and his nephew, Lawrence Lewis, were wedded. The bride wished him to wear his gorgeous new uniform, but when he came down to give her away he wore the old Continental buff and blue and no doubt all loved him better so. Often thereafter the pair were at Mount Vernon and there on November twenty-seventh a little daughter came as the first pledge of their affection. As always there was much company. In August came a gallant kinsman from South Carolina, once Colonel but now General William Washington of Cowpens fame, and for three days the house was filled with guests and there was feasting and visiting. November fifteenth Washington "Rode to visit Mr. now Lord Fairfax," who was back from England with his family, and the renewal of old friendships proved so agreeable that in the next month the families dined back and forth repeatedly.
Nor did the Farmer cease to labor or to lay plans for the future. He entered into negotiations for the purchase of more land to round out Mount Vernon and surveyed some tracts that he owned. On the tenth of December he inclosed with a letter to Anderson a long set of "Instructions for my manager" which were to be "most strictly and pointedly attended to and executed." He had rented one of the farms to Lawrence Lewis, also the mill and distillery, and was desirous of renting the fishery in order to have less work and fewer hands to attend to; in fact, "an entire new scene" was to be enacted. The instructions were exceedingly voluminous, consisting of thirty closely written folio pages, and they contain plans for the rotation of crops for several years, as well as specific directions regarding fencing, pasturage, composts, feeding stock, and a great variety of other subjects. In them one can find our Farmer's final opinions on certain phases of agriculture. To draw them up must have cost him days of hard labor and that he found the task wearing is indicated by the fact that in two places he uses the dates 1782 and 1783 when he obviously meant 1802 and 1803.
There was no hunting now nor any of those other active outdoor sports in which he had once delighted and excelled, while "Alas! our dancing days are no more." Happily he was able to ride and labor to the last, yet more and more of his time had to be spent quietly, much of it, we may well believe, upon the splendid broad veranda of his home.
Unimaginative and unromantic though he was, what visions must sometimes have swept through the brain of that simple farmer as he gazed down upon the broad shining river or beyond at the clustered Maryland hills glorified by the descending sun. Perchance in those visions he saw a youthful envoy braving hundreds of miles of savage wilderness on an errand from which the boldest might have shrunk without disgrace. Then with a handful of men in forest green it is given to that youth to put a Continent in hazard and to strike on the slopes of Laurel Hill the first blow in a conflict that is fought out upon the plains of Germany, in far away Bengal and on most of the Seven Seas. For an instant there rises the delirium of that fateful day with Braddock beside the ford of the Monongahela when
"Down the long trail from the Fort to the ford,
Naked and streaked, plunge a moccasined horde:
Huron and Wyandot, hot for the bout;
Shawnee and Ottawa, barring him out.
"'Twixt the pit and the crest, 'twixt the rocks and the grass,
Where the bush hides the foe and the foe holds the pass,
Beaujeu and Pontiac, striving amain;
Huron and Wyandot, jeering the slain,"
The years pass and the same figure grown older and more sedate is taking command of an army of peasantry at war with their King. Dorchester Heights, Brooklyn, Fort Washington, Trenton, Princeton, Brandywine, Valley Forge, Monmouth, Morristown, the sun of Yorktown; Green, Gates, Arnold, Morgan, Lee, Lafayette, Howe, Clinton, Cornwallis--what memories! Lastly, a Cincinnatus grown bent and gray in service leaves his farm to head his country's civil affairs and give confidence and stability to an infant government by his wisdom and character.
Here, with bared heads, let us take leave of him--a farmer, but "the greatest of good men and the best of great men."