To their dying day they talked reverently and most abundantly; for after General Washington became so very great there were always listeners. Had they written conscientiously as the New Jersey tutor did instead of talking, we might have known more of the reserved, stately woman who bore and fostered and taught the revered Father of his Country; but we know too well how sentiments can be trimmed and shaped and clothed upon as they pass down the generations from lip to lip, to venture to give them as gospel facts in clear, twentieth-century type. They will surely live without the aid of any present or future historian, for this is the fortune of trifles! Great thoughts, feelings, aspirations,--great unselfish deeds even,--perish and are forgotten, while trifling words, gestures, peculiarities in dress or speech, live with no apparent reasonableness whatever--certainly not because of their dignity or merit. They swarm around the honored men and women of the world like insects around a traveller on a sunny day, living of their own accord, too insignificant to challenge or brush away, gaining dignity at last from their own antiquity. Who cares whether Thomas Carlyle liked his chops tender, objected to vermin, or abhorred the crowing of a cock? Yet, I venture to say, when his name is called, his image is associated oftener with his peculiarities than with the sublime thoughts with which he sought to elevate and inspire the world. Mary Washington sustained through a long life a lofty character for Christian purity and dignity; trained a son to lead our country through many years of danger and privation to the liberty and prosperity which places it to-day in the front of all the nations of the earth; yielded her life at last, in pain unspeakable, with no murmur upon her pure lips. Yet when her name is called, all the ingenuity of her countrymen is aroused to accentuate her peculiarities--to treat her with a sort of whimsical indulgence, as an unlettered old woman, conspicuous for eccentricities of temper, of dress, petty economies--in short, make her ridiculous! Truly, in all ages there are Greeks who weary of hearing Aristides called the Just! In the face of all the testimony I have presented and will present, the most remarkable statements regarding Mary Washington are continually printed in the Historical Sketches published by the best firms in the country. What can be their authority for such statements as these?-- "The Washingtons were poor hard-working people. Mary Washington cooked, weaved, spun, washed and made the clothes for her family." "Her children had no outer garments to protect them from the cold--no cloak, boots or hats except in winter; no cloaks then. In severe weather the boys simply put on two or three trousers instead of one."