In a letter to Mrs. Washington, informing her of the great change thus made in his destiny, he deplores the hard necessity that makes it his duty to give up the sweet pleasures of home and her society; and exhorts her, in affectionate language, to bear up under their separation with cheerfulness and fortitude; at the same time giving her the gratifying assurance, that with her he could have more happiness at Mount Vernon in one month, than he could hope to find without her, were he to remain abroad seven times seven years. From the tone of this letter, she must readily have guessed that the place was not one of his own seeking. Accordingly, on the 21st of June, General Washington,--for so we must now call him,--having received his commission, set out to take command of the American army, then lying before Boston, which, being occupied by the king's troops, was in a state of siege. A company of Pennsylvania light-horse escorted him from Philadelphia to New York, where he was received with all the honor due, not only to the high station he had been called to fill, but also to his exalted character and distinguished abilities. Here he heard further particulars of the battle of Bunker's Hill, fought near Boston a few days before. From New York, the general-in-chief proceeded to Boston, and was greeted everywhere on the way with the greatest enthusiasm by the people, who came streaming in from all quarters to behold the man into whose keeping had been intrusted the destinies of America. Thus, my dear children, I have brought you, step by step, up to that great event in Washington's life when his character and actions were to be subjected to the gaze and scrutiny, not only of his own age and country, but of all ages to come, and of all the nations of Christendom. XXVI. CONCLUSION. Here Uncle Juvinell paused, and, with a countenance of undisturbed sobriety, emptied his ninth mug. In justice, however, to the good man, this pattern of old-fashioned gentility, it must be borne in mind, that the mug was a Dutch mug, and consequently a small one (as indeed are all things Dutch, from clocks to cheeses); and also that, small as it was, he never more than half filled it, except once or twice in the course of an evening, when he would gird up his loins, as it were, with a brimmer to help him over some passage in his story of unusual knottiness and difficulty.