A TRUE PORTRAIT OF MARY WASHINGTON "The search-lights of history have unfolded to us nothing of interest touching Mrs. Washington from the time of the French and Indian War until the awakening of the great Revolution. Fortunate is the woman, said the Greek of old, of whom neither good nor ill is spoken. And, curtained away from the world, the matron lived under the great Taskmaster's eye, in the bosom of that home, by whose fruit ye shall know her. Many years had rolled by since she settled at 'Pine Grove,' with her first-born son. And, while she lived in retirement and in silence, how had great events rushed forward; how had the child become the father to the man? Grave tasks were his while yet a boy. Step by step he ascended the ladder of honor and usefulness. A surveyer for Lord Fairfax at sixteen, crossing the Blue Ridge on horseback, traversing the wilderness to the bounds of civilization, getting six pistoles, or something more than $7 a day, for his efficient service, while in leisure hours he read under the guidance of Lord Fairfax, the history of England, the 'Spectator,' and other books of that high order; appointed public surveyor a little later, and then adjutant-general of Virginia troops at nineteen; managing a great plantation and training the Militia of the State; at twenty-one penetrating the Northwest as a negotiator for Governor Dinwiddie, and fighting the French; aide-de-camp to Braddock, a little later, in his ill-starred expedition, suffering defeat; with the victor at Fort Duquesne, where Pittsburg now stands, at twenty-six; member of the Virginia House of Burgesses at twenty-seven; ever onward, ever upward, until, as the great Revolution broke out, we find him journeying to Philadelphia as a delegate to the Continental Congress, and presently appearing on the field of Boston as commander-in-chief of the Continental army!"