and asked her to marry him. Washington was forced to plead with the
young lady that the youth was too young for marriage by several years,
and that he must finish his education. Apparently she acquiesced
without making a scene. She accepted a postponement of the engagement,
and Custis was enrolled among the students of King's College
(subsequently Columbia) in New York City. Even then, his passion for
an education did not develop as his parents hoped. He left the college
in the course of a few months. Throughout John Custis's perversities,
and as long as he lived, Washington's kindness and real affection
never wavered. Although he had now taught himself to practice complete
self-control, he could treat with consideration the young who had it
not.

By nature Washington was a man of business. He wished to see things
grow, not so much for the actual increase in value which that
indicated, as because increase seemed to be a proof of proper methods.
Not content, therefore, with rounding out his holdings at Mount Vernon
and Mrs. Washington's estate at the White House, he sought investment
in the unsettled lands on the Ohio and in Florida, and on the
Mississippi. It proved to be a long time before the advance of
settlement in the latter regions made his investments worth much, and
during the decade after his marriage in 1759, we must think of him
as a man of great energy and calm judgment who was bent not only
on making Mount Vernon a model country place on the outside, but a
civilized home within. In its furnishings and appointments it did not
fall behind the manors of the Virginia men of fashion and of wealth
in that part of the country. Before Washington left the army, he
recognized that his education had been irregular and inadequate, and
he set himself to make good his defects by studying and reading for
himself. There were no public libraries, but some of the gentlemen