It was her pleasure to live simply--at a time of almost riotous profusion. It was her pleasure to busy her own hands with the housewifely work of her own household,--knitting, sewing, sorting fleeces for "Virginia cloth," preserving fruits, distilling herbs for the sick,--"making drudgery divine" by sharing the tasks she laid upon others, thereby earning her many gifts to the poor. In an age of abundant leisure she was industrious; in an age of dissipation of time and money she was self-denying, diligent, and frugal; in an age when speech was free and profanity "genteel" she preserved her temperate speech, unpolluted by the faintest taint of coarseness or irreverance. When the church no longer concerned itself with the care of men's souls, she kept her own serene, in her simple faith that prayer would prevail in the end, performing every outward religious duty as conscientiously as if the priests and bishops showed, as well as taught, the way. So did she-- ". . . travel on life's common way In cheerful Godliness; and yet her heart The lowliest duties on herself did lay." This, the result of many years spent in studying her character, the writer presents as the true Mary Washington, to be honored all the more for her retired, her simple life, her homely industries. It is proper that her characteristics should be summed up before the weakness of extreme old age had lessened its activity and usefulness, while she was still young enough to catch the enthusiasm of her friends and neighbors for fine houses, fine coaches, rich dress, and much indulgence in pleasure. She was better able than some of her neighbors to indulge in these things, deemed in her day the essentials of position. Perhaps she may have heard the specious argument urged by some to warrant such indulgence,--the argument that expenditure in luxuries becomes the duty of the rich in order to stimulate the industries of the poor. But Mary Washington believed in the wholesome influence of an _example_ of self-denial, which can only become of any worth when practised by choice and not by necessity. And yet she lived long before Stuart Mill and other political economists had demonstrated that money spent in rich garments, jewels, and luxury in living adds nothing of permanent value to the world. [Illustration: MARY WASHINGTON'S HOUSE IN FREDERICKSBURG.]