kept him in the saddle daily from four to ten hours, all his life, and maintained that mental and physical energy and capacity which always distinguished him. Together they bred that sanity and caution which is said to have aroused John Adams's envious anger even when gazing upon Stuart's portrait of his otherwise revered and feared predecessor.

The Ohio Company was one of the charges left him by his brother Lawrence, and it was not unnatural, therefore, when the reports came that the French were threatening the Ohio posts of the company and were stirring up trouble among the Indians who lived between the Blue Ridge and Lake Erie, that George Washington was keenly interested in what would be done about it.

Lieutenant-Governor Dinwiddie, a stockholder in the Ohio Company as well as the king's representative in the Old Dominion, cast about for an agent in October, 1755, who would be bold enough to venture over the mountains and carry his message to the French commander, wie had nevetrated the wilds below Lake bie on his way to the junction of the Viegheny and Morongahela Rivers to sece the point of vantage now known as

It was increst and enterprise as well as foesh Chat prompted the volunteer wc of Maer George Washington to take de perilous journey though he was Nc Twenty-one years of age. And no woader de old Scotch governor, as he ha hood him his instructions, on October 9, xi,sed in his broad brogue: "Thou area braw laddie.

the story of that bitter winter trip nom Wamsburg to the French fort wat south of the present city of Erie, Ace the six mountain ranges, and through the deep forests, over the great rivers, and hostile Indians and inimical French, with only three companions, part ou the time, and only one on the return, has passed into history,

The diplomacy, persistence, prudent bare, and whe observation of the young ambasador, his hair breadth escapes from death in treacherous assault and floods, he catchul notes of his observations, and ht. hurried matches despite the bitter mony, sleet, and ice and other fearful con

ditions, are fairly comparable with the greatest efforts of military or other enterprise.

His classic report of eight thousand words, written without rest in the twentyfour hours after his return to Williamsburg on January 16, 1754, made at the command of Governor Dinwiddie and published by him there, and soon after in London by the home government, made him famous on this continent and in all the chancelleries of Europe, and formed the basis of the English declaration of war against France.

That year, and for four years thereafter, Washington's activities, though at war, were not chiefly military. He was the business captain of the war in Virginia. He was practically his own quartermaster-general. He belabored the governor, the council, and the House of Burgesses constantly for provisions, munitions, arms, and appropriations. He made numerous trips between Fort Cumberland and the Alleghanies and Williamsburg, the capital of the colony, and berated the authorities and bemoaned their dulness in his letters. The spirit he displayed and developed was inspired by military enterprise, but had a basis also in the Ohio Company interest, to which reference has been made.

Thackeray has summed up some of the consequences of the French and Indian War in a way which will bear quoting here.

"It was strange that in a savage forest of Pennsylvania a young Virginia officer should fire a shot and waken up a war which was to last for sixty years, which was to cover his own country

and pass into Europe, to cost France her Amerithe great Western Republic, to rage over the Old World and distinguish the New; and, of all the myriads engaged in the vast contest, to leave the prize of the greatest fame to him who struck the first blow."

can colonies, to sever ours from us and create

Enterprise, patriotism, and fame eternal were thus woven together.

To encourage enlistments, which were slow upon his call for troops to engage in this war, Washington advised Governor Dinwiddie to offer some bounty in excess of the ordinary small pay which Virginia allowed her militia. In the spring of 1754 Dinwiddie, therefore, by proclamation in the king's name, promised to

those who should engage to serve the colony in its attempt to repulse the French from what she regarded as her territory, though it afterward turned out to be part of Pennsylvania, two hundred thousand acres of the land which they were expected to conquer, to be divided in such proportions among officers and men as should be later determined.

In 1759, when the war in Virginia was over, Washington and his men had become entitled to this vast tract of land, and he made himself the trustee to secure from a busy and negligent home country the faithful performance of Dinwiddie's promise, which had been confirmed by the later proclamation of the king.

Meanwhile, in March, 1758, on one of his numerous expeditions to Williamsburg from Fort Cumberland in pursuit of the sinews of war, Washington had met the widow of Daniel Parke Custis, the beautiful Martha Dandridge Custis, and shortly afterward became engaged to marry her.

The only letter of that time which she preserved, written in camp, indicates his feeling and runs thus:

"July 20, 1758

"We have begun our march for the Ohio. A courier is starting for Williamsburg and I embrace the opportunity to send a few words to one whose life is now inseparable from mine. Since that happy hour when we made our pledges to each other my thoughts have been continually going to you as another self; that an all powerful Providence may keep us both in safety is the prayer of your ever-faithful and affectionate friend,

GEORGE WASHINGTON."

What became of his interest in Mrs. Fairfax under these circumstances is "another story."

Washington resigned from the army after the successful campaign against Fort Duquesne, on the ruins of which he planted the British colors, in November, 1758, and in January, 1759, married the widow at the White House, her residence with its six chimneys, in New Kent County. He acquired with her a family consisting of a beautiful daughter of four, named Martha or "Patsy" Custis, and a

lively son of six, John Parke Custis, commonly and deservedly known as "Jack."

The late Colonel Custis's estate was considered one of the largest in Virginia. Exactly what it consisted of has long been doubtful because the records of the General Court at Richmond and other records bearing upon the subject were destroyed by fire after the capture of that city at the end of the Civil War, and the papers of Washington relating to the distribution of the estate were all supposed to be lost in the passing years.

"How much Washington got with the widow" has long been a matter of curiosity, debate, and surmise, and naturally the amount has been magnified. No one seems to have carefully investigated the subject. Chief Justice Marshall and Washington Irving in their respective standard lives of Washington agree that the amount was large, and the latter places it at fifteen thousand pounds sterling, or seventy-five thousand dollars, which, to put it into modern proportions, would need to be multiplied by about ten.

George Washington Parke Custis, in his "Recollections," assumed that Washington received from his wife one hundred thousand dollars, and this has been generally accepted.

In Washington's ledger "B," in the Library of Congress, there is a note that the accounts which he kept with his wife's children as their guardian were to be found in "the little marble covered book" which he used in rendering his accounts to the General Court. This has disappeared.

When the writer of these lines became interested in the subject-matter, while preparing a book which he has been engaged on for the past five years, and which will be published shortly under the title "The Estate of George Washington Deceased," it became necessary as a part of that preparation not only to investigate the records of its subject but to go back into the life of Washington to answer the question which forced itself upon his attention at every turn, and which undoubtedly his readers will wish to have answered: "Where did he get it?"

In pursuit of that inquiry a careful study was made not only of the subject but also of all the sources of Washington's million-dollar estate.

Washington's ledgers, which begin with his eighteenth year in 1749 and end in 1792, are marked respectively "A" and "B," and then refer to a transfer of all accounts to a ledger "C," which presumably ran down to the time of his death. The latter was either lost in the Alexandria warehouse fire of 1859, which consumed many of his private papers, or has passed into the collection of some one who has not published the fact of his ownership.

Ledger "A," which begins in December, 1749, covers a period of twenty-three years, ending in 1772. It was a large stout volume of nearly four hundred heavy pages, and was bound in pigskin.* It is ruled like a cash-book, and contains his cash accounts with the debit on the left-hand page and the credit on the next. Both pages are numbered alike, i. e., the first two pages used are numbered one, the next two are numbered two, and so on through the book.

After a series of pages containing cash entries, a series of double-entry ledger accounts is interposed, the pages being numbered in the regular manner indicated above. Then there is another series of cash-entry pages and then a batch of ledger accounts follows, and in like manner this persists throughout the book. Nearly every word of the book is in Washington's beautiful handwriting, not quite as round and firm in the beginning as in the end, but careful and precise at all times. In April, 1918, I went through the body of the ledger and found no account concerning the estate of Colonel Custis or his children. Surprised at this, I turned to the index in the first part of the book, and found three accounts noted as follows:

PAGE

"Estate of Colo. Custis dec'd. 57" "Custis, Patcy Miss 59" "Custis, Jn° Parke 64"

Turning to find the pages of the ledger thus indicated, the pages appeared to be missing. In running through the cash

The volume since the discovery related below has been of Congress, and each page has been carefully repaired and mounted and the whole incased. The binding also is pretense, though its substance still exists. A photostatic copy is in the Massachusetts Historical Association Library at Boston.

taken from its binding by the authorities of the Library

served. The book, therefore, must be referred to in the past

accounts I had found a number of entries of receipt of money for these accounts, but I could not find the ledger accounts. I thought some error had been made in the indexing, and so I began a careful examination of each of the sheets of the book from page 50 to page 65, within the range of which the Custis accounts were said to be by the index. This revealed only the irregularities in numbering caused by the missing pages-page 56 was followed by page 58 and not by page 57, 58 by 60, and 63 by 65, but offered no explanation.

In handling page 56 again and also page 58, which followed immediately, I noticed the leaves to be of unusual thickness, and, holding them up to the light, I saw that each was double thick, and that in fact what appeared to be one sheet consisted of two sheets which had been pasted together, face to face, and that thereby ledger pages numbered 57 debit and 57 credit and 59 likewise were within on the backs of the others. The entries were quite visible through the paper and clearly revealed the existence of the accounts there. Turning to page 63, which preceded the lost page 64, the same thing appeared. In each case the next two pages were glued together and contained entries visible by holding them up to the light. I called the attention of the official in charge of the manuscript division of the Library of Congress to the facts, and to the careful work done in the pasting of the pages, which had escaped detection of all the many students and careful searchers of the book since the death of Washington, including Bushrod Washington, Chief Justice Marshall, Jared Sparks, Washington Irving, J. M. Toner, and perhaps hundreds of others.

The careful work of the repair man in the Library of Congress enabled a disclosure to be made after several days' preparation of the sheets.

The first pair contains the account of "the estate of 'Danl. P. Custis, Esq., deceased,'" the next, the account of "Miss Patcy Custis," and the last pair shows the account of "Mr. John Parke Custis," all in the handwriting of Washington, beginning shortly after his marriage to the widow.

The account of "The Estate of Danl.

The accounts of "Miss Patsy Custis" and "Jno. Parke Custis." Reproduced from Washington's Ledger in the Library of Congress, Washington.