It was a source of regret that she bore no children to him, but an able writer has said: “Providence left him childless that he might be the father of his country.” It is hard to judge whether or not it was a blessing; but it certainly has not detracted from his greatness that he left no successor to his fame. On the contrary, it is all the brighter from having no cloud to dim the solitary grandeur of his spotless name. Few sons of truly great and illustrious men have ever reflected honor upon their fathers and many have done otherwise. When we consider how many representative men of the world, in all nations and ages, have been burdened and oppressed with the humiliating conduct of their children, let it be a source of joy, rather than of regret, that there was but _one_ Washington, either by the ties of consanguinity or the will of Providence. This character was never marred by any imperfect type of its own, and in Washington’s life we recognize the fact that occasionally, in great emergencies, God lifts up a man for the deed; when the career is ended, the model, though not the example, is lost to the world. Mrs. Washington’s two children (Martha and John Parke Custis) were with her the bright years of her life intervening between her marriage and the Revolution. Her daughter was fast budding into womanhood, and how beautiful, thought the loving mother, were the delicate outlines of her fair young face! Airy castles and visionary scenes of splendor reared their grand proportions in the twilight-clouds of her imagination; and in the sunlight of security she saw not, or, if perchance did define, the indistinct outlines of the spectre, grim and gaunt, heeded not its significant appearance at her festive board. In all the natural charms of youth, freshness, and worldly possessions, the mother’s idol, the brother’s playmate, and father’s cherished daughter, died, and the light of the house went out, and a wail of anguish filled the air as the night winds rushed hurryingly past that desolate home on the shore of the murmuring river. A great purpose was born out of that grief: a self-abnegated firmness to rise above the passionate lamentations of selfish sorrow; and though afterward, for years, the shadow of a past woe rested upon that famous home, the poor loved it better than ever before, and meek charity found more willing hands than in the days of reckless happiness. Religion, too, and winning sympathy, softened the poignant grief, and “The fates unwound the ball of time, And dealt it out to man.”