Let us turn now from friendship to nearer and closer relations. Washington was not only too reserved, but he had too much true sentiment, to leave his correspondence with Mrs. Washington behind him; for he knew that his vast collection of papers would become the material of history, and he had no mind that strangers should look into the sacred recesses of his private life. Only one letter to Mrs. Washington apparently has survived. It is simple and full of affection, as one would expect, and tells, as well as many volumes could, of the happy relations between husband and wife. Washington had many love affairs in his youth, but he proved in the end a constant lover. His wife was a high-bred, intelligent woman, simple and dignified in her manners, efficient in all ways to be the helpmate of her husband in the high places to which he was called. No shadow ever rested on their married life, and when the end came Mrs. Washington only said, "All is over now. I shall soon follow him." She could not conceive of life without the presence of the unchanging love and noble character which had been by her side so long. Children were denied to Washington, but although this was a disappointment it did not chill him nor narrow his sympathies, as is so often the case. He took to his heart his wife's children as if they were his own. He watched over them and cared for them, and their deaths caused him the deepest sorrow. He afterwards adopted his wife's two grandchildren, and watched over them, too, in the same way. In the midst of all the cares of the presidency, Washington found time always to write to George Custis, a boy at school or at college; while Nellie Custis was as dear to him as his own daughter, and her marriage a source of the most affectionate interest. Indeed, it is evident from various little anecdotes that he was much less strict with these children than was Mrs. Washington, and much more disposed to condone faults. Certain it is that they loved him tenderly, and in a way that only long years of loving-kindness could have made possible.