one strand to understand the thought of those on the other. Every
community evolves its own spirit not easily to be apprehended by
the onlooker. The state of society in America was vitally
different from that in England. The plain living of Virginia was
in sharp contrast with the magnificence and ease of England. It
is true that we hear of plate and elaborate furniture, of
servants in livery, and much drinking of Port and Madeira, among
the Virginians: They had good horses. Driving, as often they did,
with six in a carriage, they seemed to keep up regal style.
Spaces were wide in a country where one great landowner, Lord
Fairfax, held no less than five million acres. Houses lay
isolated and remote and a gentleman dining out would sometimes
drive his elaborate equipage from twenty to fifty miles. There
was a tradition of lavish hospitality, of gallant men and fair
women, and sometimes of hard and riotous living. Many of the
houses were, however, in a state of decay, with leaking roofs,
battered doors and windows and shabby furniture. To own land in
Virginia did not mean to live in luxurious ease. Land brought in
truth no very large income. It was easier to break new land than
to fertilize that long in use. An acre yielded only eight or ten
bushels of wheat. In England the land was more fruitful. One who
was only a tenant on the estate of Coke of Norfolk died worth
150,000 pounds, and Coke himself had the income of a prince. When
Washington died he was reputed one of the richest men in America
and yet his estate was hardly equal to that of Coke's tenant.

Washington was a good farmer, inventive and enterprising, but he
had difficulties which ruined many of his neighbors. Today much
of his infertile estate of Mount Vernon would hardly grow enough
to pay the taxes. When Washington desired a gardener, or a