"Well, to love and keep it to one's self must be misery indeed," continued his companion. "There is something in that," answered George, "and I shall not conceal that it has made me unhappy at times." "And it was a kind of relief to let your tender regard express itself in poetry?" suggested his friend. "Exactly so; and you are the only person in the world to whom I have spoken of the affair." We have introduced this incident to show the tender side of George's heart. His gravity, decorum, and thoughtful habit were such as almost to preclude the possibility of his being captivated by a "lowland beauty." But this incident shows that he was much like the average boy of Christendom in this regard. Irving says: "Whatever may have been the reason, this early attachment seems to have been a source of poignant discomfort to him. It clung to him after he look a final leave of school in the autumn of 1747, and went to reside with his brother Lawrence at Mount Vernon. Here he continued his mathematical studies and his practice in surveying, disturbed at times by recurrences of his unlucky passion. Though by no means of a poetical temperament, the waste pages of his journal betray several attempts to pour forth his amorous sorrows in verse. They are mere common-place rhymes, such as lovers at his age are apt to write, in which he bewails his "'Poor, restless heart, Wounded by Cupid's dart;' and 'bleeding for one who remains pitiless of his griefs and woes.' "The tenor of some of the verses induce us to believe that he never told his love; but, as we have already surmised, was prevented by his bashfulness. "'Ah, woe is me, that I should love and conceal! Long have I wished and never dare reveal.' "It is difficult to reconcile one's self to the idea of the cool and sedate Washington, the great champion of American liberty, a woe-worn lover in his youthful days, 'sighing like a furnace,' and inditing plaintive verses about the groves of Mount Vernon. We are glad of an opportunity, however, of penetrating to his native feelings, and finding that under his studied decorum and reserve _he had a heart of flesh throbbing with the warm impulses of human nature_." In another place, Irving refers to the affair again, and furnishes the following bit of information: "The object of this early passion is not positively known. Tradition states that the 'lowland beauty' was a Miss Grimes of Westmoreland, afterwards Mrs. Lee, and mother of General Henry Lee, who figured in Revolutionary times as Light Horse Harry, and was always a favorite with Washington, probably from the recollections of his early tenderness for the mother."