This furnishes irrefragable proof that the story of the three black crows has been applied to that part of the Custis estate which the general received with the widow, the actual amount being only onethird of the amount supposed.

The photographic reproduction of the accounts of the estate of Daniel Parke Custis and Miss Patsy Custis, shown on preceding pages, is the first publication of this disclosure.

The entries on the debit side of the John Parke Custis account were illegible, but fortunately the entries on the credit side were clear and also proved the interesting fact. This unquestionably leaves to Washington's credit the great bulk of the estate of nearly one million dollars which he left at his death to Mrs. Washington and to her and his heirs in his will.

The Ohio Company enterprise was practically dissolved by the French and Indian War, and after peace was finally restored in 1763, although Washington made efforts to revive the undertaking, there was a conflict with other similar efforts made in London by Walpole and others which prevented the consummation of any of them, and all became futile in 1775 by the outbreak of the Revolution.

In the course of his surveying experience from 1748 to 1750, Washington acquired considerable lands from Lord Fairfax and Colonel William Fairfax, both on the eastern side of the Blue Ridge and in the valley of Virginia, for his services and by purchase with his earnings. The Custis money he received went largely into land also.

Washington was elected a member of the House of Burgesses in 1759, soon after his marriage, and held his seat continuously for either Frederick or Fairfax until he was chosen a delegate to the First Continental Congress in 1774.

The fifteen years of legislative training and business experience which he thus acquired have never been fully exploited by his biographers or historians of his time. Only his relation to the Fairfax resolves and similar resistance to the stamp tax and tea duties have been detailed. We are left to guess what he did from day to day and year to year, in committee and

in the House, or socially and privately, to train him for that ability and soundness of judgment which he later displayed in the national field, in the Revolution, the Constitution, the presidency, and the French crisis.

But there is a record of his endeavors as a business man from 1759 to 1774, the years of his career as a private gentleman and Virginia legislator, though little of it has been emphasized in the books.

A few of its items are these:

In 1759 he succeeded his wife as administrator of the estate of Daniel Parke Custis, her deceased husband, consisting of one hundred thousand dollars in cash and securities, belonging to her, and through her to him, and to her son and daughter, in equal shares.

He also succeeded to the long guardianship of the two children's shares in this personal estate and doubled its value in the seventeen years in which he administered it.

He was guardian and manager of "Jack" Custis's forty-five thousand acres of cultivated and wild lands. These were scattered through half a dozen counties in tide-water Virginia, and were farmed in part by many slaves, managed by overseers, or were leased on shares to tenants. Their product must be planted, husbanded, reaped, watched, warehoused, and then shipped to and sold in English and West Indian markets, and the returns secured, collected, and accounted for.

The result of his labors was that young Custis became at twenty-one years of age the richest young man in the Old Dominion.

Mrs. Custis had been advised in writing by her lawyers to get the ablest manager in the colony to superintend this vast estate if she would conserve it, a thing she was herself not qualified to do, and that she ought to pay him any salary he might reasonably ask for the service. That she chose wisely in marrying the young colonel, and got the best of a good bargain, is the opinion of many besides Mr. Moncure D. Conway, who scores the point in his "Barons of the Potomac."

Washington furthermore managed his own estate of Mount Vernon, increasing

it, through these the years of his prime, from twenty-seven hundred to eighty-two hundred acres. He ran the mill his father established, conducted fisheries at wholesale along his nearly ten miles of riverfront, teeming with shad and herring, shipped flour and salted fish to England and the West Indies in annually increasing quantities. He maintained a ferry across the Potomac at a profit and to the great convenience of the public, built a village of houses at Mount Vernon, and enlarged the mansion-house to double its original size. He established half a dozen "quarters" for his slaves on the various farms of his estate, increased their number by leases from his neighbors, and watched the welfare of these dependents with prudent care and fair-minded discipline. Their ignorance, shiftlessness, and general unprofitableness, as well as their unfortunate place in society, were a source of his constant anxiety and conscientious yearning to see them freed, and their condition and that of the colony improved accordingly.

In 1763 and for five years thereafter Washington managed the great Dismal Swamp enterprise. This involved the drainage and lumbering operations on forty thousand acres of "spongy" forested land below Norfolk in Nansemond

County, Virginia. It required the building of a number of miles of canals, the maintenance of yards and docks at Suffolk, the building of roads and camps, and the usual labor of timber-cutting and shipping on a large scale.

To this Washington devoted the greater part of six years as managing director of a company of twelve "adventurers," of whom this list survives: William Nelson, Thomas Nelson, Robert Burwell, John Robinson, George Washington, Thomas Walker, Fielding Lewis, Anthony Bacon & Co., J. Syme, Samuel Gist, Robert Tucker, and William Walters.

A little later he bent his efforts to create the Mississippi Company and to procure for it a grant of several millions of acres of land in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys from the crown. He was the manager of the enterprise and for some years it engaged his best endeavors. He invited the participation of his Virginia friends, and from 1765 to 1772 struggled, but in

vain, in competition with London and court influences, for the royal favor. Then the Revolution dissolved all the rainbows of hope in that direction.

Throughout the years 1759 to 1772 Washington was constantly engaged in the patient endeavor to compel the British Government to make good Governor Dinwiddie's promise to give the Virginia veterans of the French and Indian War two hundred thousand acres of land on the western waters. It took him thirteen years to get justice done. He constituted himself, with their full approval, of course, the agent and trustee of his soldiers, advanced all the expenses of survey and allotment, and finally distributed the lands to officers and men in due proportions, so that no complaint by them or their heirs seems to have remained of record.*

In that connection an illustration of his painstaking methods is to be found in a letter, of which a copy exists in

the letter-book record in the Library of Congress, dated June 24, 1771, which is here given as amended and completed on inspection of the original letter, recently shown me by E. Byrne Hackett, Esq., of New Haven, Connecticut. Fairfax County Virga. June 24th. 1771.

SIR,

Your letters of the 15th of Decr from Georgia and 20th of April from Charles Town, came duly to hand. In answer to them I have only to inform you that my advertisements (which you speak of) issued in consequence of Instructions from our late Governor and Council, and that I have nothing more to do in the affair, than to receive, and deliver in to

them the several claims of the respective Officers and Solyear 1754 (Under a Proclamation of the then Lieutenant all those who should voluntarily engage in an Expedition to ye Ohio for certain purposes) among whom your Son was one, & well entitled not only by Proclamation, but by his Merit and Bravery to a Lieutenants share of the Land. which no doubt he, (if any of us do), will obtain. as I have exhibited your claims to that end.

diers who Imbarked in the Service of this Colony in the Governor, offering a reward of 200,000 Acres of Land to

matter you will stand on the same footing with the rest Nothing final however is determined, in respect to this of the Claimants provided you contribute in the same pro portion towards the Incident Charges attending the Survey &c which is now set about & for which each Subaltern Officer Six pounds and four pounds ten shillings curt Money of has already been called upon for the respective Sums of this Coly, in order to prosecute the Work; It will behove you therefore to give some Person a power of Attorney to act on your behalf who must be furnished with the means of contributing your quota's past & to come, for the furthering of the Business, which must from the Nature of it be accompanied with trouble and expense, &, I know of nobody better qualified to serve you in this matter than the One who first exhibited your Claim, I mean Mr. Alexander Craig, who is a resident of Williamsburg-A Man of very fair Character, and lyes more in the way of receiving your instruc

tions, and communicating any Information which may be proper for you to receive than I should or any else that I

could recommend.

that all the Claims are now in, consequently the proportion and Value of the Land, which may fall to each officers share,

It may not be amiss to add for your further Satisfaction,

now fully known, and that we have many difficulties, and some uncertainties to pass through, before our Right to these Lands can be fully recognized-such powerful Solicitation is there from People of Power in Great Britain for the

Lands to the Westward of us, where our Grant was Located the equity of our right will at length prevail, in which case

-and such the opposition we met with; tho it is hoped that

He further caused Colonel William Crawford and his brother Valentine in this and the subsequent years to locate for him many claims in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and the present West Virginia, until such purchases, together with his share of the bounty lands, amounted to fiftythree thousand acres of the best bottomlands on the Ohio, Great Kanawha, and Little Miami Rivers, as well as the Great Meadows, on which he had surrendered Fort Necessity, and a great tract in the heart of the now famous Connelsville coke region. Incidentally he also acquired two large farms in Maryland, and jointly with General George Clinton, while waiting for the signing of the definitive treaty of peace with England in 1783, he bought six thousand acres in the Mohawk Valley near Utica, New York. Washington had no money at the time, but Clinton loaned him twenty-five hundred dollars for the purpose, on his note at seven per cent interest, which was promptly repaid, partly out of the first crop Washington raised after the Revolution and partly from sales of the land.

It was work of this kind which employed the ripening years of the busiest

the Land will be worth the trouble and expenses notwithstanding its remote distance from Navigation.

I am very much obliged to you for the favourable opinion you are pleased to entertain of me-I wish I may always continue to deserve it, and approve myself

Το

Sir

Your Most Obedient Servant
GEORGE WASHINGTON.

John Polson Esq., Now in Jamaica, to the care of Mr. Hugh
Polson Sheriff of Kingstone.

the Revolution. It was thus he became acquainted with his neighbors and fellow countrymen. It was because of these peaceful pursuits and great engineering enterprises that he learned to know the needs of the colonies and foresaw their future. It was his informed vision which made practical the possibilities of expansion when the French and Spanish menaces were removed or made innocuous by the Seven Years' War. So it was that he became the leader of the Old Dominion, of the South, and finally of the entire thirteen colonies, and felt and knew the rights, the interests, and the sentiments of each.

Therefore, when the clash of the tea tax, the stamp duty, and the Boston massacre came, he was clear in his mind that the rights of Englishmen were being infringed at the behest of an ill-balanced German autocrat, and for several years he rejected the idea of separation from England, insisted on repeal of the unconstitutional laws, and a return by Parliament and the crown to legitimate methods.

When all protests failed and the First Continental Congress met in 1774 it was for these reasons, this experience in peaceful pursuits and just interests, that Washington stood forth as the great captain of industry, and Patrick Henry said of the members of the Congress: "If you speak of eloquence, Mr. Rutledge of South Carolina is the greatest orator; but if you speak of solid information and sound judgment, Colonel Washington is by far the greatest man on the floor."

And now in modern phrase, written by John Drinkwater for the glory of the only man fairly comparable with him:

"When the high head we magnify
And the sure vision celebrate,
And worship greatness passing by,
Ourselves are great."

T

HE room was very quiet, but it was not a dead quiet. There was a mellowness and warmth in the atmosphere that could not be entirely attributed either to the softly shaded lights or to the fire that glowed steadily in the old-fashioned fireplace. Mrs. Denton was sitting in the corner of the big divan, reading one of the French books Sheila had given her for Christmas, and occasionally glancing from it to the pocket "Larousse" which lay beside her. Across the room, the light from the lamp on the table falling over his shoulder onto the evening paper, sat Mr. Denton.

It was a pretty picture, the lamplight making iridescent pools of color in the drapery of Mrs. Denton's tea-gown, and softening the effect of the room. It was this way that they always sat for the hour or so after dinner, and it was always just this picture that Sheila unconsciously saw when she thought of the word home. The grandfather's clock in the diningroom struck ten, and Mr. Denton looked across the room at his wife.

"I think I'll be going up-stairs in a while, dear," he said, throwing aside the paper.

"I would, Peter; you've been looking tired lately. I'm glad we're going to the country next month; you need the rest." "Oh, I'm all right, Helen. I've worked a bit too hard over the book, perhaps. I wonder how Sheila will like it out at the old place. There won't be much of this beaux and late parties business for her, I'm afraid," and Mr. Denton's eyes lit up with an unexpected twinkle as he thought of the social life at "The Willows."

"Sheila worries me a little lately, Peter."

"Overdoing it, you mean?"

"No, not that. But she used to go out on parties with all the young people, and

it was never with the same boy twice in succession, but lately she's narrowed down to seeing just that McHenry boy, and I don't like it." Mrs. Denton's perplexed sigh told more clearly than her words how little she liked it.

"Well, it seems to me most girls do narrow down sooner or later. Sheila's going to get married one of these days, you know."

"I know, Peter; but Sheila's still pretty young, and she isn't the girl she'll be in a few years. She's going to develop, and she's going to do big things when she gets out of this rut of parties and-"

"Why, Helen! Can't a girl do big things after she's married?"

Mrs. Denton smiled at her husband, but her eyes were still troubled.

"Of course she can, dear, if she marries the right man; but Sheila wouldn't know the right one if he did come along now. Of course I may be mistaken, but I think she might as well bury herself alive as marry Sid McHenry. I know that all he'll do with life will be to make a little money, show a mild interest in politics, and play poker. His mind couldn't even soar to bridge, and I'm sure his idea of literature is confined to the sporting and financial sheets of the newspaper.'

The twinkle faded from Mr. Denton's eyes, and he started walking up and down the room with his hands behind his back, a habit he had when his attention was really engaged.

"Are you sure she's in love with him?" he asked, after a few minutes.

"Not sure, no, dear; but she's been reserved lately, and she's been with him so much. Oh, I wish you two were closer!"

She had not meant to say it, but in her mood of helplessness before the situation she apprehended, it had slipped out.

Before Sheila came out Mr. and Mrs. Denton had been obliged to travel on