Roger Morris is known in history as the man who married
Mary Philipse. And this lady lives in history because she had
the felicity of having been proposed to by George Washington.
It is George himself, tells of this in his Journal, and George
you remember could not tell a lie.

George was twenty-five, he was on his way to Boston, and
was entertained at the Philipse house, the Plaza not having
then been built.

Mary was twenty, pink and lissome. She played the harpsichord.
Immediately after supper George, finding himself alone in the
parlor with the girl, proposed.

He was an opportunist.

The lady pleaded for time, which the Father of his Country
declined to give. He was a soldier and demanded immediate
surrender. A small quarrel followed, and George saddled his
horse and rode on his way to fame and fortune.

Mary thought he would come back, but George never proposed
to the same lady twice. Yet he thought kindly of Mary
and excused her conduct by recording, ``I think ye ladye was
not in ye moode.''

Just twenty-two years after this bout with Cupid, General
George Washington, Commander-in-Chief of the Continental
Army, occupied the Roger Morris Mansion as headquarters,
the occupants having fled. Washington had a sly sense of