She never left the plain, four-roomed, dormer-windowed dwelling at "Pine Grove," until for her greater protection she moved into Fredericksburg, choosing a home still plainer and less spacious than the house on her farm. Says Mr. Custis, who saw her in this home: "Her great industry, with the well-regulated economy of all her concerns, enabled her to dispense considerable charities to the poor, although her own circumstances were always far from rich. All manner of domestic economies met her zealous attentions; while everything about her household bore marks of her care and management, and very many things the impress of her own hands. In a very humble dwelling thus lived this mother of the first of men, preserving, unchanged, her peculiar nobleness and independence of character." This most valuable testimony as to Mary Washington's character, appearance, and manner is contained in the first chapter of "The Recollections and Private Memoirs of Washington," by George Washington Parke Custis, son of "Jack" Custis, who was the only son of Mrs. George Washington. "Jack" Custis died young (he was married at nineteen), and his son, named for General Washington, with his sister, Nelly Custis, were adopted into the Mount Vernon family. Although this son was too young to have fully appreciated Mary Washington, his testimony comes directly from her own sons and daughter and others who knew her intimately. Through them he studied her, and by no one of them was he contradicted. His statements are conclusive--not to be challenged. They need no additional force from the tradition that between the Custis family and Madam Washington "there was never perfect accord"--one of the meaningless traditions originating in the busy brain of some gossip, for which there was no foundation in truth. Although several extracts have already been given from Mr. Custis's book, the fact that the book itself is now out of print, and to be found only in the Congressional Library at Washington, and possibly in some of the older libraries of the country, will perhaps excuse me for having quoted so freely the chapter relating to Mary Washington. It was written only thirty-seven years after her death, and from it has been drawn the relations given by Sparks, Lossing, and others. "The mother of George Washington," says Mr. Custis, "the hero of the American Revolutionary War, and the first President of the United States, claims the noblest distinction a woman should covet or can gain, that of training a gifted son in the way he should go, and inspiring him by her example to make the way of goodness his path to glory."