This list does not include the item which Washington soon found the
greatest of his burdens--letter-writing. His correspondence increased
rapidly and to an enormous extent.

Many mistakenly think [he writes to Richard Henry Lee] that I am
retired to ease, and to that kind of tranquility which would grow
tiresome for want of employment; but at no period of my life, not
in the eight years I served the public, have I been obliged to
write so much myself, as I have done since my retirement.... It
is not the letters from my friends which give me trouble, or add
aught to my perplexity. It is references to old matters, with
which I have nothing to do; applications which often cannot
be complied with; inquiries which would require the pen of a
historian to satisfy; letters of compliment as unmeaning perhaps
as they are troublesome, but which must be attended to; and the
commonplace business which employs my pen and my time often
disagreeably. These, with company, deprive me of exercise, and
unless I can obtain relief, must be productive of disagreeable
consequences.[1]

[Footnote 1: Irving, IV, 466.]

When we remember that Washington used to write most of his letters
himself, and that from boyhood his handwriting was beautifully neat,
almost like copper-plate, in its precision and elegance, we shall
understand what a task it must have been for him to keep up his
correspondence. A little later he employed a young New Hampshire
graduate of Harvard, Tobias Lear, who graduated in 1783, who served
him as secretary until his death, and undoubtedly lightened the
epistolary cares of the General. But Washington continued to carry on