"I am too young and bashful to take such a step; it would be foolish indeed."
"Well, to love and keep it to one's self must be misery indeed," continued his companion.
"There is something in that," answered George, "and I shall not conceal that it has made me unhappy at times."
"And it was a kind of relief to let your tender regard express itself in poetry?" suggested his friend.
"Exactly so; and you are the only person in the world to whom I have spoken of the affair."
We have introduced this incident to show the tender side of George's heart. His gravity, decorum, and thoughtful habit were such as almost to preclude the possibility of his being captivated by a "lowland beauty." But this incident shows that he was much like the average boy of Christendom in this regard.
Irving says: "Whatever may have been the reason, this early attachment seems to have been a source of poignant discomfort to him. It clung to him after he look a final leave of school in the autumn of 1747, and went to reside with his brother Lawrence at Mount Vernon. Here he continued his mathematical studies and his practice in surveying, disturbed at times by recurrences of his unlucky passion. Though by no means of a poetical temperament, the waste pages of his journal betray several attempts to pour forth his amorous sorrows in verse. They are mere common-place rhymes, such as lovers at his age are apt to write, in which he bewails his
"'Poor, restless heart,
Wounded by Cupid's dart;'
and 'bleeding for one who remains pitiless of his griefs and woes.'