This seems to have been written more with an eye to its influence on others than to its strict accuracy. During the time Washington attended at Pohick Church he was by no means a regular church-goer. His daily “where and how my time is spent” enables us to know exactly how often he attended church, and in the year 1760 he went just sixteen times, and in 1768 he went fourteen, these years being fairly typical of the period 1760-1773. During the Presidency a sense of duty made him attend St Paul’s and Christ churches while in New York and Philadelphia, but at Mount Vernon, when the public eye was not upon him, he was no more regular than he had always been, and in the last year of his life he wrote, “Six days do I labor, or, in other words, take exercise and devote my time to various occupations in Husbandry, and about my mansion. On the seventh, now called the first day, for want of a place of Worship (within less than nine miles) such letters as do not require immediate acknowledgment I give answers to…. But it hath so happened, that on the two last Sundays—call them the first or the seventh as you please, I have been unable to perform the latter duty on account of visits from Strangers, with whom I could not use the freedom to leave alone, or recommend to the care of each other, for their amusement.” What he said here was more or less typical of his whole life. Sunday was always the day on which he wrote his private letters,—even prepared his invoices,—and he wrote to one of his overseers that his letters should be mailed so as to reach him Saturday, as by so doing they could be answered the following day. Nor did he limit himself to this, for he entertained company, closed land purchases, sold wheat, and, while a Virginia planter, went foxhunting, on Sunday. It is to be noted, however, that he considered the scruples of others as to the day. When he went among his western tenants, rent-collecting, he entered in his diary that, it “being Sunday and the People living on my Land _apparently_ very religious, it was thought best to postpone going among them till to-morrow,” and in his journey through New England, because it was “contrary to the law and disagreeable to the People of this State (Connecticut) to travel on the Sabbath day—and my horses, after passing through such intolerable roads, wanting rest, I stayed at Perkins’ tavern (which, by the bye, is not a good one) all day—and a meetinghouse being within a few rods of the door, I attended the morning and evening services, and heard very lame discourses from a Mr. Pond.” It is of this experience that tradition says the President started to travel, but was promptly arrested by a Connecticut tithing-man. The story, however, lacks authentication.