good man describes this marriage, evidently with a wink, as "my second
Venture." And it is sad to remember that he did not live to know that his
"Venture" made America his debtor. The success of the union seems pretty
good argument in favor of widowers marrying. There were four children in
the family, the oldest nearly full grown, when Mary Ball came to take
charge of the household. She was twenty-seven, her husband ten years
older. They were married March Sixth, Seventeen Hundred Thirty-one, and on
February Twenty-second of the following year was born a man child and they
named him George.

The Washingtons were plain, hard-working people--land-poor. They lived in
a small house that had three rooms downstairs and an attic, where the
children slept, and bumped their heads against the rafters if they sat up
quickly in bed.

Washington got his sterling qualities from the Ball family, and not from
the tribe of Washington. George was endowed by his mother with her own
splendid health and with all the sturdy Spartan virtues of her mind. In
features and in mental characteristics, he resembled her very closely.
There were six children born to her in all, but the five have been nearly
lost sight of in the splendid success of the firstborn.

I have used the word "Spartan" advisedly. Upon her children, the mother
of Washington lavished no soft sentimentality. A woman who cooked, weaved,
spun, washed, made the clothes, and looked after a big family in pioneer
times had her work cut out for her. The children of Mary Washington obeyed
her, and when told to do a thing never stopped to ask why--and the same
fact may be said of the father.

The girls wore linsey-woolsey dresses, and the boys tow suits that