But the noblest tribute to this great woman was Washington's own. "All that I am," said he, "I owe to my mother." All that we are as a nation we owe to him. His debt is ours. It is many times multiplied. It is ever growing as the ever growing Republic illustrates in its virtues and in its faults alike the merit of his example and the wisdom of her teachings. We but degrade ourselves when we refuse to recognize this debt. Let us rather discharge it as best we may, in "coin of the highest value--the pure gold of devotion and gratitude." CHAPTER XXI NOON IN THE GOLDEN AGE Virginia, between the years 1760 and 1775, attained her highest prosperity. The growth of the colony in general, and the advance of luxury in living was rapid, marked by an increased taste for amusements of the most costly kind, and great expenditure in living and entertaining. It was high noon in the Golden Age! Life was far more elegant and luxurious than it was even fifteen years before. The transplanted Englishman had rapidly prospered in the new land. Great wealth had suddenly come to him through his tobacco, and he made haste to use and enjoy it. The four-roomed house--quite good enough for his cavalier grandfather--had stepped aside to give place to a pillared, porticoed, stately mansion. The dormer windows--like heavy-lidded eyes--had been superseded by "five hundred and forty-nine lights" for one dwelling. The planter often built on the site of his old colonial residence, sometimes incorporating the old into the new. An eminence, commanding a wide view of the surrounding country, was a coveted spot in plantation times. It behooved the settler (for reasons similar to those which influenced Captain John Smith) to build his house "on a high hill neere a convenient river, hard to be assalted and easie to be defended." When the perilous days of Indian massacre and treachery had passed away, and the country had entered upon its Saturnian age of peace and plenty, the Virginians clung to the old historic building-sites, and upon them erected ambitious mansions, with flagged colonnades, extended wings, and ample offices; surmounting the whole with an observatory whence the proprietor with his "spy-glass" could sweep the country--not now for the stealthy approach of an enemy, but to feast his eyes upon a scene of unbroken beauty peacefully lying beneath a summer's sun. The mansion stood apart in solemn grandeur upon some knoll or eminence overlooking the great highway, the river. It was not to be taken casually, in a by-the-way sort of a manner, not to be stumbled upon by accident. It was to be approached with deliberation through a long line of sentinels--an avenue of Lombardy poplars--"the proper tree, let them say what they will, to surround a gentleman's mansion." [Illustration: Monticello. The Home of Thomas Jefferson.]