There were no "poor whites"--the helpless, hopeless, anæmic race now numerous in Virginia. There were well-instructed men and women in the industrial classes who filled situations as visiting shoemakers, weavers, or housekeepers. The Virginia woman in "The Golden Age" had need of all the help she could get. She married while yet a child--often less than fifteen years old. Her housekeeper was her tower of strength. She helped generally throughout the family, nursing the sick, caring for the children's comfort, and standing sponsor for them in baptism.[13] A letter from one of these humble retainers, a housekeeper at Stratford, somewhere about 1774, has been preserved by which we perceive she represented the wife of Governor Fauquier at a christening. [13] "Lee of Virginia." (Dated) "STRATFORD, September 27. "TO MISS MARTHA CORBIN--_Dear Miss._ I gladly embrace this oppertunity of writing to you to put you in mind there is such a being as mySelfe. I did not think you two would have slited me so. Your little cosen matilda was made a cristan the 25th of September. The godmothers was mrs washington miss becy Tayloe Miss Nancy Lawson Stod proxse for Miss Nelly Lee and I for Mrs Fauquer, godfathers was col. Taloe Mr Robert Carter mrs washington Col Frank Lee, the Esq: mr washington and your ant Lee Dessers there Love to you I am your very humble servant Elizabeth Jackson." It is easy to understand why Miss Jackson should have dignified all the Lees who employed her with large capitals, but why she should thus have honored Miss Nancy Lawson above "mrs. washington" we shall never know in this world, only, as everybody knows, no married lady--even Mrs. John Augustine Washington, our Mary's daughter-in-law--could possibly be as important as that most worshipped of all creatures, a Virginia young lady. As to the race-horses, we cannot begin to reckon their increased importance. Janus and Yorick are among the immortals! So also should be General Washington's horses,--Ajax, Blueskin, Valiant, and the royal Arabian Magnolia. Nor should Silver-eye be forgotten, nor the lordly Shakespeare, for whose service a groom was appropriated to sleep near him at night in a specially built recess, that his Lordship's faintest neigh might find response. The men who settled the Northern Neck of Virginia were cavaliers from "Merry England," with an inherited love of horse-racing, and, indeed, all sporting. There was not a Roundhead among them! They liked cards and dancing. Nobody could make them believe that the devil hunted with the hounds and ran with the race-horses.