Washington has generally been credited with the introduction in America of mules as a valuable adjunct to plantation appurtenances; but very few people know that one of his favorite riding animals was a white mule, which was kept carefully stabled and groomed along with his blooded horses at Mount Vernon. In the year 1797, there was published at Alexandria for a brief period, a weekly paper called _Hopkin's Gazette_. A few numbers of this sheet are still extant. In one of them there is an account of an exciting adventure, in which Washington, the white mule, and one Jared Dixon figured. It is evident that the editor of this paper did not have an exalted opinion of the great patriot, as he speaks of him as "a man who has the conceit of believing that there would not be any such country as America if there had not been a George Washington to prevent its annihilation." From this account it appears that Jared Dixon was a Welshman, who lived on a hundred-acre tract of land adjoining the Mount Vernon plantation. Washington always claimed that the tract belonged to him, and made several efforts to dispossess Dixon, but without success. According to the _Gazette_, Washington's overseer had, on one occasion, torn down the Dixon fence and let the cattle into the field, and various similar annoyances were resorted to in order to force Dixon to move away. But Dixon would neither surrender nor compromise, and kept on cultivating his little farm in defiance of the man who had been first in war and was now first in peace.