I had thus engaged as a volunteer, much against the wishes of my mother, who, as she said, saw no good in war and entreated me not again to expose myself to peril in the wilderness. If the French had been of her opinion as to war, I might have stayed at home. We had an unpleasant meeting, or rather parting, for she did little else but lament; but what was there I could do? I left her in tears. I have no intention to record here the full history of this expedition, but rather to revive for my own interest what I, personally, saw, and what is nowhere else fully set down. My appointment gave satisfaction to many friends, who felt more deeply than I myself that in the matter of commissions and as to the Villiers affair――for that was soon noised about――I had been ill treated by the governor. The favourable sentiments thus expressed could not, under the circumstances, be other than pleasing to a mind which had always walked a straight line and endeavoured, as far as human frankness and strong passions would allow, to discharge the relative duties to his Maker and to his fellow-countrymen without by indirect means seeking popularity. As I pause here before making the effort to recall some of the incidents of the disastrous events in which I was to have a share, I remember with pleasure the friends who felt that my honourable invitation from a veteran general was a final answer to the censures of the King’s governor. Nor, in looking back over the greater war and my life in office, have I had reason to complain of want of affection from those whose esteem I desired to retain. Many times in my life I have, however, had just cause to complain of things said of me by those who possessed my regard, but I have in all such cases felt it better not to sacrifice a friendship on account of ill temper or the indiscretion of the hour, and am made happy in the belief that I have thus been able to keep what I would not willingly have lost. Where men have been needed in the service or in office, I have been still more desirous of forgiving words or actions which affected me alone, but which did not in the end destroy their usefulness. Nor have I myself been without need to be thus considered, for at times I am by nature irritable and short of temper. Lawrence once said to me that he found it more easy to forgive his enemies than his friends; but this I did not clearly see, and, after all, if a man is resolved to keep himself from thinking of what is said against him, the memory of it soon becomes dulled and there is less need of forgiveness. Among the many evidences of esteem I had before the Braddock affair was a letter from Captain Peyronney, now recovered of his wound, but to die bravely on the Monongahela. He must have heard that I had been ill spoken of by Major Muse and perhaps by others. He wrote very odd English, but I could hardly find fault with his meaning.