ageable enough, to know best; but I could n't help tink'n sah!"

Returning to the Junction, I saw a very different type of the Virginia negro: an old man of seventy, who conversed intelligently, but in a strangely quiet and subdued tone, which bespoke long suffering and great patience. He had been a free man seven years, he told me; but he had a brother who still served the man he belonged to.

"But he, too, is free now," I said. wages?"

"Don't he receive

The old man shook his head sadly. "There's nothing said about wages to any of our people in this part of the country. They don't dare to ask for them, and their owners will hold them as they used to as long as they can. They are very sharp with us now. If a man of my color dared to say what he thought, it would be all his life was worth!"

ON a day of exceeding sultriness (it was the fourth of September) I left the dusty, stifled streets of Washington, and went on board the excursion steamer Wawaset, bound for Mount Vernon.

Ten o'clock, the hour of starting, had nearly arrived. No breath of air was stirring. The sun beat down with torrid fervor upon the boat's awnings, which seemed scarce a protection against it, and upon the glassy water, which reflected it with equal intensity from below. Then suddenly the bell rang, the boat swung out in the river, the strong paddles rushed, and almost instantly a magical change took place. A delightful breeze appeared to have sprung up, increasing as the steamer's speed increased. I sat upon a stool by the wheelhouse, drinking in all the deliciousness of that cooling motion through the air, and watching compassionately the schooners with heavy and languid sails lying becalmed in the channel, — indolent fellows, drifting with the tide, and dependent on influences from without to push them,- while our steamer, with flashing wake, flag gayly flying, and decks swept by wholesome, animating winds, resembled one of your energetic, original men, cutting the sluggish current, and overcoming the sultriness and stagnation of life by a refreshing activity.

On we sped, leaving far behind the Virginia long-boats, with their pointed sails on great poles swung aslant across the masts, sails dingy in color and irregular in shape, looking, a little way off, like huge sweet potatoes. Our course was southward, leaving far on our right the Arlington estate embowered in foliage on the Virginia shore; and on our left

the Navy Yard and Arsenal, and the Insane Asylum standing like a stern castle, half hidden by trees, on the high banks back from the river. As we departed from the wharves, a view of the city opened behind us, with its two prominent objects, the unfinished Washington Monument, resembling in the distance a tall, square, pallid sail; and the many-pillared, beautiful Capitol, rising amid masses of foliage, with that marvellous bubble, its white and airy dome, soaring superbly in the sun.

Before us, straight in our course, was Alexandria, quaint old city, with its scanty fringe of straight and slender spars, and its few anchored ships suspended in a glassy atmosphere, as it seemed, where the river reflected the sky. We ran in to the wharves, and took on board a number of passengers; then steamed on again, down the wide Potomac, until, around a bend, high on a wooded shore, a dim red roof and a portico of slender white pillars appeared visible through the trees.

It was Mount Vernon, the home of Washington. The shores here, on both the Maryland and Virginia sides, are picturesquely hilly and green with groves. The river between flows considerably more than a mile wide: a handsome sheet, reflecting the woods and the shining summer clouds sailing in the azure over them, although broad belts of river-grass, growing between the channel and the banks like strips of inundated prairie, detract from its beauty.

As we drew near, the helmsman tolled the boat's bell slowly. "Before the war," said he, "no boat ever passed Mount Vernon without tolling its bell, if it had one. The war kind of broke into that custom, as it did into most everything else; but it is coming up again now."

We did not make directly for the landing, but kept due on down the channel until we had left Mount Vernon half a mile away on our right. Then suddenly the steamer changed her course, steering into the tract of river-grass, which waved and tossed heavily as the ripple from the bows shook it from its drowsy languor. The tide rises here some four feet. It was low tide then, and the circuit we had made was necessary to avoid grounding on the bar. We were entering shallow water.

TOMB OF WASHINGTON.

93

We touched and drew hard for a few minutes over the yielding sand. The dense grass seemed almost as serious an impediment as the bar itself. Down among its dark heaving masses we had occasional glimpses of the bottom, and saw hundreds of fishes darting away, and sometimes leaping sheer from the surface, in terror of the great, gliding, paddling monster, invading, in that strange fashion, their peaceful do

main.

Drawing a well-defined line half a mile long through that submerged prairie, we reached the old wooden pier, built out into it from the Mount Vernon shore. I did not land immediately, but remained on deck, watching the long line of pilgrims going up from the boat along the climbing path and disappearing in the woods. There were, perhaps, a hundred and fifty in the procession, men and women and children, some carrying baskets, with intent to enjoy a nice little picnic under the old Washington trees. It was a pleasing sight, rendered interesting by the historical associations of the place, but slightly dashed with the ludicrous, it must be owned, by a solemn tipsy wight bringing up the rear, singing, or rather bawling, the good old tune of Greenville, with maudlin nasal twang, and beating time with profound gravity and big stick.

As the singer, as well as his tune, was tediously slow, I passed him on the way, ascended the long slope through the grove, and found my procession halted under the trees on the edge of it. Facing them, with an old decayed orchard behind it, was a broad, low brick structure, with an arched entrance and an iron-grated gate. Two marble shafts flanked the approach to it on the right and left. Passing these, I paused, and read on a marble slab over the Gothic gateway the words,

"WITHIN THIS ENCLOSURE REST THE REMAINS OF GEN ERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON."

The throng of pilgrims, awed into silence, were beginning to draw back a little from the tomb. I approached, and leaning against the iron bars, looked through into the still, damp

chamber. Within, a little to the right of the centre of the vault, stands a massive and richly sculptured marble sarcophagus, bearing the name of "Washington." By its side, of equal dimensions, but of simpler style, is another, bearing the inscription, "Martha, the consort of Washington.'

It is a sequestered spot, half enclosed by the trees of the grove on the south side, cedars, sycamores, and black-walnuts, heavily hung with vines, sheltering the entrance from the mid-day sun. Woodpeckers flitted and screamed from trunk to trunk of the ancient orchard beyond. Eager chickens were catching grasshoppers under the honey-locusts, along by the old wooden fence. And, humming harmlessly in and out over the heads of the pilgrims, I noticed a colony of wasps, whose mud-built nests stuccoed profusely the yellowish ceiling of the vault.

There rest the ashes of the great chieftain, and of Martha his wife. I did not like the word "consort." It is too fine a term for a tombstone. There is something lofty and romantic about it; but "wife" is simple, tender, near to the heart, steeped in the divine atmosphere of home,

"A something not too bright and good
For human nature's daily food."

She was the wife of Washington: a true, deep-hearted woman, the blessing and comfort, not of the Commander-inchief, not of the first President, but of the MAN. And Washington, the MAN, was not the cold, majestic, sculptured figure which has been placed on the pedestal of history. There was nothing marble about him but the artistic and spotless finish of his public career. Majestic he truly was, as simple greatness must be; and cold he seemed to many;-nor was it fitting that the sacred chambers of that august personality should be thrown open to the vulgar feet and gaze of the multitude. It is littleness and vanity that are loose of tongue and unseasonably familiar.

"Yet shine forever virgin minds,

Beloved by stars and purest winds,