amusements of his children; he was not without tenderness in his nature,
but the exhibition of it was repressed on principle,--a man of high
character and probity, greatly esteemed by his associates. He endeavored
to bring up his children in sound religious principles, and to leave no
room in their lives for triviality. One of the two weekly half-holidays
was required for the catechism, and the only relaxation from the three
church services on Sunday was the reading of "Pilgrim's Progress." This
cold and severe discipline at home would have been intolerable but for
the more lovingly demonstrative and impulsive character of the mother,
whose gentle nature and fine intellect won the tender veneration of her
children. Of the father they stood in awe; his conscientious piety
failed to waken any religious sensibility in them, and they revolted from
a teaching which seemed to regard everything that was pleasant as wicked.
The mother, brought up an Episcopalian, conformed to the religious forms
and worship of her husband, but she was never in sympathy with his rigid
views. The children were repelled from the creed of their father, and
subsequently all of them except one became attached to the Episcopal
Church. Washington, in order to make sure of his escape, and feel safe
while he was still constrained to attend his father's church, went
stealthily to Trinity Church at an early age, and received the rite of
confirmation. The boy was full of vivacity, drollery, and innocent
mischief. His sportiveness and disinclination to religious seriousness
gave his mother some anxiety, and she would look at him, says his
biographer, with a half-mournful admiration, and exclaim, "O Washington!
if you were only good!" He had a love of music, which became later in
life a passion, and great fondness for the theater. The stolen delight
of the theater he first tasted in company with a boy who was somewhat his
senior, but destined to be his literary comrade,--James K. Paulding,
whose sister was the wife of Irving's brother William. Whenever he could
afford this indulgence, he stole away early to the theater in John