Weekly Report on the Work of the Spinners.

The Flower Garden.

A Page from a Cash Memorandum Book.

One of Washington's Tavern Bills.





CHAPTER I


A MAN IN LOVE WITH THE SOIL

One December day in the year 1788 a Virginia gentleman sat before his
desk in his mansion beside the Potomac writing a letter. He was a man of
fifty-six, evidently tall and of strong figure, but with shoulders a
trifle stooped, enormously large hands and feet, sparse grayish-chestnut
hair, a countenance somewhat marred by lines of care and marks of
smallpox, withal benevolent and honest-looking--the kind of man to whom
one could intrust the inheritance of a child with the certainty that it
would be carefully administered and scrupulously accounted for to the
very last sixpence.

The letter was addressed to an Englishman, by name Arthur Young, the
foremost scientific farmer of his day, editor of the _Annals of