The Youth of Washington: Told in the Form of an Autobiography

It was raining heavily as I sat that night and considered what I should do. To fall back I had no mind. I had been set to the slow work of preparing roads, and had made them up...

The lines of social rank among us I judge to have been made early to depend on extent of landed property, so that the owners of these vast estates were like great nabobs, and by...

I saw Mr. Franklin again but once before he went away. He was clearly not a man altogether to the liking of Lord Fairfax, but why, I never came to know. He seemed to me at that...

When I went again to accept and thank the governor for the appointment, he talked to me at some length, and I learned that he was more largely interested in the Ohio Company tha...

I regretted that I had not asked Mr. Franklin why at night we heard so many sounds in the woods which are not heard by day. No doubt he would have found an explanation. Long aft...

At last I declared that I must camp at the first brook we met, and so kept on, stumbling, and ready to fall down with fatigue. At this time, being come some two miles farther in...

I did not like these people, and the Indians interested me more. Genn understood their tongue well enough to talk with them, and the way they had of sign-language pleased Lord F...

All this happened in October, 1743, and was the means of making a useful change in my life and ways. At about this time my two brothers came together to visit us, in order to sa...

At this time I was old enough to take an interest in what my elders said of the politics of the colonies. I was more and more surprised to hear how lightly they regarded the gov...

“And if I have done well, and as is fitting the story, it is that which I desired: but if slenderly and meanly, it is that which I could attain unto.”――_2 Maccabees xv. 38._

I felt for a time and with much sharpness the sense of defeat, and I heard later that Captain Mackay complained that I was dull company on the ride, which was no doubt true enou...

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...

The provisions and waggon needed for the general were made ready during the night, and at break of day, with two companies of grenadiers, I rode back again, hardly knowing if I...