The snows had melted from the violet beds, and the "snow-birds" were nesting in the cedars when our Mary left her girlhood's home to become the wife of Augustine Washington. Her new home was a large, old-fashioned house on the banks of the Potomac--one of those dwellings with great low-stretching roof, which always reminds me of a gigantic fowl brooding with expanded wings over its young. It was not one of the imposing colonial houses just then (March 6, 1730) in process of erection. Marion Harland says, in her reverent "Story of Mary Washington": "Augustine Washington's plantation of Wakefield rested upon the Potomac, and was a mile in width. Wakefield comprised a thousand acres of as fine wood and bottom land as were to be found in a county that by reason of the worth, talents and patriotism that adorned it was called the Athens of Virginia. The house faced the Potomac, the lawn sloping to the bank between three and four hundred yards distant from the 'porch,' running from corner to corner of the old dwelling. There were four rooms of fair size upon the first floor, the largest in a one-story extension in the back being the chamber. The high roof above the main building was pierced by dormer windows that lighted a large attic. At each end of the house was a chimney built upon the outside of the frame dwelling and of dimensions that made the latter seem disproportionately small. Each cavernous fireplace would hold half a cord of wood. About the fireplace in the parlor were the blue Dutch tiles much affected in the decorative architecture of the time." Here we can fancy the bride, covertly exploring her new home and scanning the footprints of her predecessor; keeping her own counsel, but instructing herself as to what manner of woman had first enthroned herself in the bosom of her lord. It appears she was arrested in this voyage of discovery by a small but rare treasure of books. Standing before the diamond-paned "secretary," she examined one volume after another. Finally, turning over the leaves of one, she read: "On Moderation and Anger," "On Self-Denial," "On ye Vanity and Vexation which ariseth from Worldly Hope and Expectation." These seemed to her words of wisdom by which one might be guided. The title-page announced "Sir Matthew Hale's Contemplations," the fly-leaf revealed the name of the owner, the first wife, "Jane Washington." Finding the ink-horn, she wrote firmly beneath, "And Mary Washington"--probably the first time she had written the new name. We all know the rest: how this book of England's learned Judge never left her side; how she read it to her stepsons and her own sons; how it was reverenced by George Washington; how it is treasured to-day at our National Mecca, Mount Vernon. CHAPTER XIII BIRTHPLACE OF GEORGE WASHINGTON