It is a great misfortune to us that our observant tutor was not invited to Mount Vernon. Mr. Christian's class met at Mount Vernon, also at "Gunston Hall"--the fine residence of the George Mason who wrote the famous Declaration of Rights in 1776. Mrs. Martha Washington's lovely daughter, Martha Custis, was then just thirteen years old, and there is no doubt, not the least, that she wore a blue silk quilt and had her hair "craped" (_crépé_) high and interwoven with a feather. On the 18th of April, 1770, Washington records, "Patsy Custis and Milly Posey went to Col. Mason's to the Dancing School." The discipline of children was stern. Their duties included the courtesies of life as religiously as its business. "I have no Stockings and I swear I won't go to the Dancing School," says fifteen-year-old Bob, who is at the awkward age and dreads society. "'Are Bob and Nancy gone to Mr. Turberville's?' said the Colonel at Breakfast--'Nancy is gone, Sir, Bob stays at Home, he has no shoes!' 'Poh--what nonsense,' says the Colonel. He sends the clerk to the Plantation Store for a pair of Shoes. Bob he takes to his Study and floggs severely for not having given seasonable notice, and sends him instantly to the Dance" in a suitable and proper frame of mind to enjoy himself! Balls, fish feasts, christenings, cock-fights, horse-races and _church-going_ filled the time as well as visiting and dancing. Everybody went to church through all weathers. In winter the churches were bitterly cold. No provision of any kind for heating them was ever dreamed of. The church was one of the rallying places for the neighborhood. "There are," says the tutor, "three grand divisions of time at the church on Sundays; Viz: before Service giving and receiving letters of business, reading Advertisements" (affixed to the church-doors) "consulting about the price of Tobacco, Grain, &c, and settling either the lineage, Age or qualities of favourite Horses. 2. In the church at Service, prayers read over in haste, a Sermon, seldom under and never over twenty minutes, but always made up of sound morality, or deep-studied Meta-physicks. 3. After Service is over, three quarters of an hour spent in strolling round the church among the crowd in which time invitations are given by gentlemen to go home with them to dinner." The christenings were seasons of large family gatherings--the silver christening bowl, like the punch-bowl, descending from generation to generation.