Indeed, it pleased Mr. Duane, when maligning me, to call me Georgius Rex, but of this I apprehend that I have said enough. It is of no importance. Outside of my school, the life at Wakefield was well suited to a lad of spirit. There were thirty horses in the stables, and some of them well bred and had won races at Williamsburg. The waters of Pope’s Creek, where the Potomac tides rush in at flood and out at ebb through a narrow outlet of the creek, were full of crabs, oysters, clams, and fish. One of the slaves, named Appleby after August’s school, was engaged in the supply of fish, which the many negroes and the family needed. I think there were, at the least, seventy blacks. Being permitted to go on the water with Appleby, I found much satisfaction in sailing and rowing and the search for shell-fish. My brother August once surprised me by saying that some day the bottom of the Bay of Chesapeake would be a richer mine, on account of the oysters, than my brother Lawrence’s iron-mines, by which we all set great store. This may some day come to pass. The quantities of shad took in April and May were enough to feed an army, and what we did not eat went to feed the land. In the autumn I was sometimes allowed to sit with August in a wattled blind, behind brush, while at dawning of day he shot the ducks, geese, and swans which flew over the little islands of Pope’s Creek in great flocks. I prospered in this hardy life and grew strong and able to endure, nor was it less good for me in other ways; for, although I cared very little for August’s fiddling, nor to hear Anne sing, nor for the books, of which there was a fair supply, I admired August so much that I began, as some lads will do, to imitate his ways of doing things. And this was of use to me, for August was very courteous and mild-spoken to people of all classes, and much beloved by his slaves, to whom he was a gentle and considerate master. The country along the Potomac was well settled with families of gentry, and visits were made by rowboats, so that I found very soon boy companions, although Belvoir, where the Fairfaxes lived, and Mount Vernon, rebuilt in 1742, being remote, were less frequently visited. The church at Oak Grove was the better attended, and few persons were presented or admonished for non-attendance, because on Sunday, as many drove long distances, provisions were brought, and in the oak grove near by, between services, there was a kind of picnic, very pleasant to the younger people. VIII