To correspondents, too, Washington showed how keenly he felt the attacks upon him, writing that “the publications in Freneau’s and Bache’s papers are outrages on common decency; and they progress in that style in proportion as their pieces are treated with contempt, and are passed by in silence, by those at whom they are aimed,” and asked “in what will this abuse terminate? The result, as it respects myself, I care not; for I have consolation within, that no earthly efforts can deprive me of, and that is, that neither ambitious nor interested motives have influenced my conduct. The arrows of malevolence, therefore however barbed and well pointed, never can reach the most vulnerable part of me; though, whilst I am _up_ as a _mark_, they will be continually aimed.” On another occasion he said, “I am beginning to receive, what I had made my mind up for on this occasion, the abuse of Mr. Bache, and his correspondents.” He wrote a friend, “if you read the Aurora of this city, or those gazettes, which are under the same influence, you cannot but have perceived with what malignant industry and persevering falsehoods I am assailed, in order to weaken if not destroy the confidence of the public.” When he retired from office he apparently cut off his subscriptions to papers, for a few months later he inquired, “what is the character of Porcupine’s Gazette? I had thought when I left Philadelphia, of ordering it to be sent to me; then again, I thought it best not to do it; and altho’ I should like to see both his and Bache’s, the latter may, under all circumstances, be the best decision; I mean not subscribing to either of them.” This decision to have no more to do with papers did not last, for on the night he was seized with his last illness Lear describes how “in the evening the papers having come from the post office, he sat in the room with Mrs. Washington and myself, reading them, till about nine o’clock when Mrs. Washington went up into Mrs. Lewis’s room, who was confined, and left the General and myself reading the papers. He was very cheerful; and, when he met with anything which he thought diverting or interesting, he would read it aloud as well as his hoarseness would permit. He desired me to read to him the debates of the Virginia Assembly, on the election of a Senator and Governor; which I did—and, on hearing Mr. Madison’s observations respecting Mr. Monroe, he appeared much affected, and spoke with some degree of asperity on the subject, which I endeavored to moderate, as I always did on such occasions.” IX FRIENDS The frequently repeated statement that Washington was a man without friends is not the least curious of the myths that have obtained general credence. That it should be asserted only goes to show how absolutely his private life has been neglected in the study of his public career.