While at Greenway Court I had other teachers besides his lordship, for many Indians, frontier traders, and trappers came to claim food and shelter, which were never denied them. Often the woods were lighted up by their fires, and I found it of use, and interesting, to hear what was said and to learn something of the uncertain ways of the savages.
I heard how the Delawares, Shawnees, and Iroquois had wandered from the north and taken to the lands about the Ohio, and how the French protected them and claimed all the country up to the Alleghanies.
To these camps came the rude, lawless traders from Pennsylvania, who had stories to tell of the Indians and of the French beyond the Ohio. These men foresaw a war on the frontier when scarce any others did, and, by their accounts of the fertility of the wide savannas beyond the Ohio, filled me with desire to explore this rich wilderness. I learned that already the French had warned the fur-traders to leave and had driven away their hunters, and when I mentioned this to Lawrence he said we were not easy folk to drive, and, least of all, Pennsylvania Quakers, and that there would be trouble, which there was soon enough. We were on the edge of a struggle in which all the world was to share. Meanwhile, time went on, and what Lord Fairfax called the “frontier pot” was boiling.
I was often back at home, sometimes with my mother, or at Belvoir, or at Mount Vernon, riding to hounds, surveying, and making more than I needed in the way of money, and enough to keep me in horseflesh and to give me better clothes, for which I have always had a fancy. Only in the woods I liked best such dress as our rangers wear, and good moccasins are the best of foot-gear. But as to clothing, when not in the woods, I found in myself a liking for a plain genteel dress of the best, without lace or embroidery. Fine clothes do not make fine men, and the man must be foolish who has a better opinion of himself because his clothes are such as the truly judicious and sensible do not advise.
Until I had money of my own I did not venture much at cards; but now I played a little, although I was never fond of it, and lost more than I made. I was more inclined to the game of billiards.
If at times I was in danger of leaning towards the rough ways of the wilderness, I had the advantage of seeing at Mount Vernon, or at the homes of the Carters and Lees, or among the Lewises of Warner Hall, and elsewhere, the older gentry, who were orderly and ceremonious, and who reminded me anew of his lordship’s lesson as to the value of good manners.
Sometimes on these great plantations I was employed in surveys, but at others, as at Shirley and the Corbins’, I was only a guest. I was, I conceive, unlike the idle young men of some of these houses, for I was over-grave and cared less for card-playing and hard drinking than suited them.
I found myself at this time preferring the society of women, who are always amiably disposed to overlook the shyness of men like myself, and with whom it is possible to be agreeable without either punch or tobacco; but racing of horses I always liked, and dancing.
In those days cock-fighting was also to my liking. I remember well, because it was at Yorktown, a great main of cocks in 1752 between Gloucester and York for five pistoles each battle, and one hundred the odd. I was disappointed to leave before it was decided. I saw there a greater cock-fight in after days.
I recall now that my brother Lawrence once wrote home from Appleby School that each boy must pay to the master on Easter Tuesday a penny to provide the school with a cock-fight.