"The General's house is rather warm, snug, convenient and useful, than ornamental. The size is what ought to suit a man of about two or three thousand a year in England. The out-offices are good and seem to be not long built; and he was making more offices at each wing to the front of the house, which added more to ornament than to real use. The situation is high, and commands a beautiful prospect of the river which parts Virginia and Maryland, but in other respects the situation seems to be out of the world, being chiefly surrounded by woods, and far from any great road or thoroughfare.... The General's lady is a hearty, comely, discreet, affable woman, some few years older than himself.... The General's house is open to poor travellers as well as rich, he gives diet and lodging to all that come that way, which indeed cannot be many, without they go out of their way on purpose...." A visitor of January 19, 1785, was Elkanah Watson. In his diary Washington wrote simply that Mr. Watson came in and stayed all night; and that he went away after breakfast next morning. But Mr. Watson had a fuller account to give: "I found him at table with Mrs. Washington and his private family, and was received in the native dignity and with that urbanity so peculiarly combined in the character of a soldier and eminent private gentleman. He soon put me at ease.... The first evening I spent under the wing of his hospitality, we sat a full hour at table by ourselves, without the least interruption, after the family had retired. I was extremely oppressed by a severe cold and excessive coughing, contracted by the exposure of a harsh winter journey. He pressed me to use some remedies, but I declined doing so. As usual after retiring, my coughing increased. When some time had elapsed, the door of my room was gently opened, and on drawing my bed-curtains, to my utter astonishment, I beheld Washington himself, standing at my bedside, with a bowl of hot tea in his hand." The following May Rev. Thomas Coke and Bishop Francis Asbury were welcomed to Mt. Vernon. "The General's seat is very elegant," Mr. Coke wrote. "He is quite the plain, country-Gentleman." After dinner the visitors presented to their host a petition for the emancipation of the Negroes, "entreating his signature, if the eminence of his station did not render it inexpedient for him to sign any petition." Washington told his guests that he was "of their sentiments, and had signified his thoughts on the subject to most of the great men of the State; that he did not see it proper to sign the petition, but if the Assembly took it into consideration, would signify his sentiments to the Assembly by a letter." An attractive picture of the General was given by Richard Henry Lee after a visit to Mt. Vernon in November, 1785: