Like many boys, I inclined to this life. I remind myself of it here because it has been said that I was intended at this time to serve the king as a midshipman, which was never the case. Meanwhile,――for this was an affair long talked about,――my mother’s brother, Joseph Ball, wrote to her from London, May 19, 1746, that the sea was a dog’s life, and, unless a lad had great influence, was a poor affair, and the navy no better. Upon this my mother wrote, offering various trifling objections, and at last hurried to Mount Vernon, and so prevailed by her tears that my small chest was brought back to land from a ship in the river. My brother Lawrence comforted me in my disappointment, saying there were many roads in life, and that only one had been barred. I remember that I burst into tears, when once I was alone, and rushed off to the stables and got a horse, and rode away at a great pace. This has always done me good, and, somehow, settled my mind; for I have never felt, as I believe a Latin writer said, that care sits behind a horseman. I jolted mine off, but for days would not have any one talk to me of the matter. Even as a lad, I had unwillingness to recur to a thing when once it was concluded, and that is so to this day. IX The summer passed away in sport and in visits to William Fairfax, who lived below us on the river. Here I saw much good society, among others the Masons, Carys, and Lees, and formed an attachment to William Fairfax, the master of Belvoir, and his son George, which was never broken, although we came long after to differ in regard to our political views. But of this, and of his cousin, Lord Fairfax, more hereafter. In the fall of this year I returned to my mother, or rather, as before, I went to board across the Rappahannock at Fredericksburg, in the house of a widow of the name of Stevenson, which she pronounced Stinson. She had, by her two marriages, six sons, two of them Crawfords and four Stevensons. They were all well-grown fellows, and of great strength and bigness. I am reminded, as I set down in a random way what interests me, that, as I expected, this act of attention brings to mind some things which I seemed to have altogether forgotten. Among them is this, that, just before returning to my school, I went with Lawrence to pay my respects to Lord Fairfax, who was come for a visit to his cousin at Belvoir. We found the family, however, in sudden distress at the news, just arrived, of the death in battle of Thomas, the second son, who was killed in the Indies, in an engagement on board his Majesty’s ship _Harwich_. We made, on this account, but a short stay. I remember that, as we rode away, Lawrence said to me: “A great preacher called Jeremy Taylor wrote a sermon about death, and gave a long list of the many ways of dying. Which way, George, would you wish to die?” I said I did not wish to die at all.