Regarding this philanthropic plan of La Fayette’s for the uplifting of the negroes, Washington thus wrote to him in 1786: “Your late purchase in Cayenne, with a view of emancipating your slaves, is a generous and noble proof of your humanity. Would to God a like spirit might diffuse itself generally into the minds of the people of this country! But I despair of seeing it. Some petitions were presented to the Virginia Assembly at its last session for the abolition of slavery, but they could scarcely obtain a hearing. To set the slaves afloat at once would, I really believe, be productive of much inconvenience and mischief; but by degrees it certainly might, and assuredly ought, to be effected, and that, too, by legislative authority.” La Fayette also interested himself at this time in behalf of the persecuted French Protestants. Though himself belonging to the Romish Church, he was neither bigoted nor intolerant, and hated the tyranny of priests as bitterly as the tyranny of kings. In the midst of the sterner subjects regarding war and politics, which form so large a part of the correspondence between Washington and La Fayette, it may be pleasing to note the following homely little incident which brings both men in somewhat closer relationship with lesser mortals whose lives are made up of petty details and home affairs. In the “Mémoires et Manuscrits” of La Fayette, a work published by his family, in Paris, in 1837, and which has never been entirely translated into English, only scattered letters having been from time to time culled therefrom, for the various sketches given regarding the life of La Fayette, we have noticed much valuable and interesting information not elsewhere to be found. Among the correspondence of General La Fayette many letters from Washington were collected, several of which were quoted in their proper chronological order, and of the date of June, 1786, we find the following little note, which is interesting, as it takes us into the home-circle at Mount Vernon, and shows us the goodly housewife in the person of Lady Washington, and the kindly host rather than the stately general in this picture of Washington. The note reads as follows:—