Under these circumstances it was with real indignation that Washington learned that complaints of hers that she “never lived soe poore in all my life” were so well known that there was a project to grant her a pension. The pain this caused a man who always showed such intense dislike to taking even money earned from public coffers, and who refused everything in the nature of a gift, can easily be understood. He at once wrote a letter to a friend in the Virginia Assembly, in which, after reciting enough of what he had done for her to prove that she was under no necessity of a pension,—“or, in other words, receiving charity from the public,”—he continued, “But putting these things aside, which I could not avoid mentioning in exculpation of a presumptive want of duty on my part; confident I am that she has not a child that would not divide the last sixpence to relieve her from real distress. This she has been repeatedly assured of by me; and all of us, I am certain, would feel much hurt, at having our mother a pensioner, while we had the means of supporting her; but in fact she has an ample income of her own. I lament accordingly that your letter, which conveyed the first hint of this matter, did not come to my hands sooner; but I request, in pointed terms, if the matter is now in agitation in your Assembly, that all proceedings on it may be stopped, or in case of a decision in her favor, that it may be done away and repealed at my request.” Still greater mortification was in store for him, when he was told that she was borrowing and accepting gifts from her neighbors, and learned “on good authority that she is, upon all occasions and in all companies, complaining … of her wants and difficulties; and if not in direct terms, at least by strong innuendoes, endeavors to excite a belief that times are much altered, &c., &c., which not only makes _her_ appear in an unfavorable point of view, but _those also_ who are connected with her.” To save her feelings he did not express the “pain” he felt to her, but he wrote a brother asking him to ascertain if there was the slightest basis in her complaints, and “see what is necessary to make her comfortable,” for “while I have anything I will part with it to make her so;” but begging him “at the same time … to represent to her in delicate terms, the impropriety of her complaints, and _acceptance_ of favors, even when they are voluntarily offered, from any but relations.” Though he did not “touch upon this subject in a letter to her,” he was enough fretted to end the renting of her plantation, not because “I mean … to withhold any aid or support I can give from you; for whilst I have a shilling left, you shall have part,” but because “what I shall then give, I shall have credit for,” and not be “viewed as a delinquent, and considered perhaps by the world as [an] unjust and undutiful son.”