By an Associate.

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Continuing the narrative that began here.

Chapter XII.—Washington for President.—Mr. Hamilton’s plan for electing him.—New terminology for a new form of government.—Posters, broadsides, and articles in the papers.—Campaign tour.—Debate with Adams.—Washington elected.

To the question of who should be our president there could, in Washington’s mind, be only one answer. How to arrange the desired result, however, was not completely obvious. The Constitution had created a mechanism by which a president would be chosen: viz., Susanna’s “Electoral College,” a term I quickly learned not to mention in her presence. But what was an Electoral College, and how did one come to be? The Constitution’s rules were simple and direct, but only because they left many questions unanswered. When the people chose electors, were they to choose men whose judgment they trusted on account of long experience and preeminence in wisdom? Phrased in those terms, the question answered itself quickly. It was decided by no one, or by everyone at once, that the people would choose men who had already made up their minds as to which candidate they would choose, and would not change their minds under any circumstances, no matter what new evidence might come to light.

There were many men who thought they might be exactly the man required for this new position of President. Fortunately Washington had a weapon in his arsenal that could not be matched by any of his opponents. Mr. Hamilton had already concluded that his own prospects of advancement depended upon Washington’s being elected President, and he threw himself into the project with his customary enthusiasm.

“We need to make sure you’re appealing to all demographics,” Hamilton explained over Madeira on the back porch at Mount Vernon.

“What are demographics?” Washington naturally asked.

“That’s a term I’ve come up with on my own. It literally means ‘people-writing.’ ”

“You want me to write on people?”

“No, you misunderstand—”

“I usually just sign their autograph albums, and that makes them happy enough.”

“It’s not about writing on—”

“I’d think the quill would tickle them terribly.”

“Please try to—”

“There was one young woman in Annapolis who made a request I considered somewhat immodest, but even that was on fabric.”

“Look, there are—”

“And the ink feathered, so that to my mind the signature was spoiled, but on the other hand I should hope that not many people will see that much of her anyway.”

“It doesn’t mean writing on people,” Hamilton said. “It means writing about people.”

“Oh, I see,” said Washington. “Well, really, when I think about it, I do seem to write mostly about people, except for Irving of course. That is, when I do write. Well, I shall be very glad to have a new word for it.”

“Let me begin again,” said Hamilton. “There are many different kinds of people, and we want to make sure you appeal to all of them. The best way to do that is with targeted advertising, as I call it.”

“Do you—”

“And I’m not shooting anything!” Hamilton explained quickly. “Let me show you what I mean. What sort of people do you think go to cheap inns and taverns?”

“Well,” said Washington, “I should think they would be people with little money who like to drink.”

“There you are, then,” said Hamilton. ‘We put up a poster in every cheap tavern: “Share a Drink with Washington—A Man of the People, for the People, Protecting Your Interests from the Rich.’ And then what sort of people go to the races?”

“Mostly wealthy planters,” Washington replied.

“So we put up posters wherever the races meet: ‘Washington—The Prince of Planters, Protecting Your Interests from the Mob.’ You see how it works. You aim, so to speak, your advertisements at the people who are likely to see them in the place where we hang them. Thus your advertisements are targeted, as I call it.”

“But it seems to me that you have General Washington acting in two entirely contradictory ways,” said Susanna. “You have him protecting the poor against the rich, and the rich against the poor.”

“I prefer to say ‘complementary’ rather than ‘contrary,’ ” said Hamilton. “Like St. Paul, you become all things to all men.”

“Oh, well, if it’s in Scripture,” said Washington.

“We’re simply broadening your appeal by the Pauline method, as it were. Similarly, in the New England states, we shall have posters to tell the people that Washington is the protector of shipping and manufacturing interests against the rich plantation-owners, and in the South, of course, we shall be careful to say that Washington, the man of the South, will protect Southern interests against Northern plutocrats.”

“Plutocrats?” Weems asked.

“It’s another word I’ve come up with on my own,” Hamilton said proudly. “It means rich people with too much influence.”

“My word, Hamilton, you certainly are enriching our American language,” said Washington. “Why, if we keep adding words at this rate, no one will be able to understand us at all.”

“We explain what they mean as we introduce them,” Hamilton responded. “I have a list, you see, and I add to it every day.” He shuffled downward in his stack of papers until he found the one he was looking for. “Here it is.”

Washington took the paper, which looked tiny in his hand, and examined it closely. “Well, you certainly have been busy, Hamilton. You have some fine words here, if I’m any judge of words. Like ‘ee-lights,’ for example. What are ‘ee-lights’?”

“That’s ‘ay-leets,’ ” said Hamilton. “It’s a word I borrowed from the French.”

“Oh, well, I suppose if we pillage foreign languages, there’s no end to the number of words we can come up with. I thought you were just making them up out of your own head, like ‘sizzwappler.’ ”

“ ‘Sizzwappler’? What’s that?”

“It’s a word I just made up out of my own head,” Washington explained.

“But, you see, these words are formed on regular principles out of the materials already afforded us by the Saxon, French, Latin, or Greek.”

“It seems like a great deal of work to have to know four languages just to make up words in English. I think my method is much simpler. What does ‘ay-leets’ mean, anyway?”

“It means people who are better educated, with more wisdom and understanding, than the average man.”

“Oh, I see. So you want to tell the people that I am one of these ay-leets.”

“No! People hate the elites. They don’t want anyone to be wiser or to know more than they do. They want a leader who’s as stupid and ignorant as they are.”

“But then why would they want someone like me?” asked Washington.

A brief silence followed, and then Hamilton explained, “It’s simply a matter of image.” He pointed to the word “image” in his list. “We want to create an image of you as a man of the people.”

“You mean like a statue?”

“No!” Hamilton put some effort into getting his annoyance under control; it could perhaps be unwise to be too short with a man who was three times his height. “You have doubtless imagined, say, George the Third in your mind.”

“Oh, yes,” said Washington. “I picture him with long ears that stand up and out from his head, a long muzzle, four hooves, a long and brushy tail…”

“You mean like a mule?”

“Precisely. I believe he shares many characteristics with my archnemesis Irving.”

Hamilton looked blank for a moment, and then assimilated this new addition to the conversation and went on. “Well, that image in your mind stands in for King George. When you think of King George, that is what you think of. What we want to do is control the image the voters have of you in their minds. We want them to see the right image when they hear your name.”

“Oh!” cried Washington, “so they can see me when I’m not there! That’s extraordinary, Hamilton. It’s a remarkable idea. A real sizzwappler. Do you have a word for that, too—people seeing me when I’m far away?”

“It’s not really— Well, actually, I suppose it is seeing you when you’re far away, isn’t it? We could call it “teleoptics,’ or ‘proculovision.’ ”

“How about ‘television’?” asked Washington. “I like the sound of that.”

“No, you can’t combine Greek and Latin parts that way. But you see the principle, don’t you? When the ordinary tavern-goer thinks of you, we want him to think of someone like him—someone who hates the rich industrialists and planters and merchants and suchlike people and looks out for the interests of the ordinary man. When the planters think of you, we want them to see a rich planter who thinks the way they do and hates the common mob. That’s what I mean by ‘image.’ ”

“But the way you paint these images of me, I’m not sure I’d like me very much if I met me.”

“We don’t care what you think of you. We care what they think of you. We need to reach the people who will vote for the electors who will vote for Washington.”

“And you will do this by putting up images of me?”

Hamilton looked blank again for a moment, and then said, “If necessary.”

The only other candidate we really had to fear was John Adams, who was not nearly so well known as the General. But Hamilton was bent on leaving nothing to chance. Soon we began to see Washington-for-President broadsides and posters wherever we went. When Susanna and I took little Crispus and Jane for a walk down toward the docks, there were Washington’s posters:

WASHINGTON
for
LOWER
TARIFFS
and
MARITIME
IMPROVEMENTS

Later Susanna asked Hamilton what he meant by “maritime improvements,” and he replied, “It means whatever the shipping interests want it to mean.”

Not long afterward, a poster appeared across from St. Paul’s, very near our house:

DON’T LET THEM TAKE YOUR SLAVES

Vote for
WASHINGTON

Because when slavery is outlawed,
only outlaws will have slaves.

Susanna was especially enraged by this one because she already knew that Hamilton had sent to Boston to have posters put up with a very different message:

KEEP MASSACHUSETTS FREE

Vote for
WASHINGTON

Don’t let slaveholders
control the confederation.

“How is that even logical?” she had demanded of Hamilton when he told us of the Boston posters. “Washington is a slaveholder himself, and you are asking them to put him at the head of the Union.”

“The people will vote for the image,” Hamilton had replied. “The man is immaterial.”

Meanwhile Mr. Adams’ campaign was not idle. A few days after Washington’s first posters were put up, a small poster appeared on the wall of the Lyceum:

You Might Consider Voting
for

JOHN ADAMS

If It Is Not
Too Much Trouble.

We saw no other Adams posters, but the mere existence of this one raised Mr. Hamilton’s ire to a frightening degree. “We must crush this Adams,” he said when we were again gathered on the porch at Mount Vernon. “We must pound him into the earth until there is no life left in him.”

“Mr. Hamilton,” Washington said with obvious shock, “John Adams is a friend of mine, and no consideration could induce me to do him the least injury.”

“I meant it metaphorically, of course,” Hamilton said hastily. “Privately you and Mr. Adams may remain the best of friends. It is only in the political sense that we must beat him down and crush his bones to powder under our boots. That is what ‘politics’ means.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” said Washington. “What would we do to beat him down politically but not personally?”

“Well, for a start, we might place anonymous articles in the Gazette, which would soon be picked up by the papers from Boston to Savannah.”

“I see. And what would these articles say?”

“Anything unflattering about Adams that would damage his reputation. We could question his masculinity, for example.”

“Don’t be absurd, Hamilton. Adams is as much a man as any of us here. I know a man when I see one; I can tell the difference.”

Hamilton glanced helplessly at Susanna, but she gave him a look that would wither an oak tree.

“The content of the accusation is not important,” Hamilton bravely continued. “In fact it will be more effective if we do not phrase the thing as an accusation, but rather as a question. “Is John Adams a Horse Thief?” You see we say nothing dishonest; we merely ask a question. Or, better yet, a denial: “Adams Denies Arson Charges, Say Campaign Insiders.” We tell no untruth: in fact we specifically deny that Adams is an arsonist. Nothing could be more honest than that.”

“But what do you accomplish by telling the voters that Mr. Adams has done nothing wrong?” I asked.

“Ah, but we do not precisely tell them that he has done nothing wrong. We tell them that he has denied doing something wrong, and they will conclude from that that someone has accused him of doing it, and then they will wonder, Did he do it? And there will be a good number of them who think, in the words of the old adage, ‘Where there’s smoke—’ ”

“ ‘—permission ought to be asked of the ladies.’ Yes, I am familiar with the proverb,” Washington said. “But something about this makes me uneasy, Hamilton. Is it not possible to win the office of President simply by giving the public a candid assessment of my intelligence and abilities, and thus allowing the people to make an informed decision?”

Hamilton thought for a moment.

“No,” he replied at last.

Soon Hamilton’s anonymous articles began appearing in the Alexandria Gazette. As Hamilton had foretold, the articles were not long in being reprinted in Philadelphia, Charleston, Baltimore, New-York, Savannah, Hartford, and even as far west as Pittsburgh; or so I was told much later by a certain Mr. Brackenridge, who will appear later in these pages.

Not long after that, we began to hear the rumors in the usual gossip at the taverns and coffee-houses of Alexandria, and even in church: they say that Adams stole twenty horses from a defenseless old widow in Quincy; they say that Adams has one-quarter African blood in his veins; they say that Adams wears a long coat to hide his pointed tail; they say all those things that Hamilton’s articles specifically denied about Adams, which, as Hamilton had intended, introduced thoughts that had not previously been in the minds of the people. Adams and his friends wrote letters denying the rumors, but all their denials were merely favorable breezes under the wings of Rumor, and had the effect of spreading the stories farther and farther. In effect, Adams was doing Washington’s campaigning for him.

Meanwhile, Hamilton arranged for Washington to travel up and down the country to meet the people face to face—“shaking hands and kissing babies,” as Hamilton explained, although the latter part of the program was quickly abandoned when we discovered that the effect on babies of a fifteen-foot man bending down to kiss them was not uniformly positive. We traveled in a train of coaches and wagons, which Hamilton called a “cavalcade,” that included a large number of correspondents for the various papers up and down the country. After Washington began to complain of back pain, we added a large crew of diggers, who would go ahead of us and prepare a nine-foot-deep trench for Washington to walk up and down in, so that he could greet the people who came to see him without bending over. Everywhere we stayed, of course, Washington put up one of his brass plaques, which were greatly prized by the communities; most of them appeared now on churches and meeting halls, and not a few barns; which, but for the very most opulent planters’ houses in the South, were generally the only available buildings sufficiently large to accommodate Washington’s current dimensions. We had to send men ahead—“advance scouts,” Hamilton called them—to find such accommodations, and, after two regrettable incidents that were much talked about where they occurred, to make sure that the location chosen for Washington’s appearance before the crowd was not dangerously near a cherry orchard.

As more and more writers for the weeklies joined our cavalcade, their demands upon Washington’s time grew more and more inconvenient, until at last Hamilton set aside certain times when all of them could gather at once and ask the General whatever questions occurred to them. Because of the press of correspondents trying to push their way to the front, these occasions quickly became known among the literary gentlemen as “press conferences.” The usual procedure was that one correspondent at a time would be chosen to ask a question, to which Washington would give a reply, and then Hamilton, standing on a raised platform beside him, would explain what Washington meant by what he had said. It was not obvious to Washington that these explanations were truly representative of his own thoughts; but Hamilton gave him another lecture on the subject of “image,” and Washington agreed because agreeing made the lecture stop.

Hamilton’s master stroke was to arrange a face-to-face debate between Washington and Adams in Philadelphia. In this debate, certain correspondents from the Philadelphia papers were permitted to ask questions, which both candidates answered extemporaneously. Mr. Adams answered every question intelligently, and had all the information about tariffs, diplomacy, commerce, finance, Indian affairs, and turnpikes ready to hand. Washington had none of that, with the result that his brief answers and irrelevant aphorisms held the attention of the audience, and he was universally judged to be the winner of the debate.

At last the great day came; the people went to the polls in great numbers; they chose electors for Washington; and the General was ready to take his place as the first President of the United States.

But if the electoral process was obscure, it was clarity itself in comparison with the presidency. The Constitution specified a few duties of the President, which, taken together, might occupy a day of his time out of the month. What was the President supposed to be doing the rest of the time?

To be continued in Chapter XIII.

By an Associate.

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Continuing the narrative that began here.

Chapter XI.—Washington’s private life.—Failings of the Articles of Confederation.—Constitutional Convention called.—Seating difficulties.—One dollar, one vote rejected.—Question of apportioning representation.—The Three-Fifths Compromise.—Constitution adopted.

Over the next few years Susanna and I saw Washington frequently, but we were not in constant attendance as before. We took up residence in my house on Prince-street in Alexandria, and about a year afterward Susanna gave birth to our son Crispus Attucks Gist, named for her martyred friend in Boston. A year later, our daughter Jane Adams Gist arrived, whom we named for Mrs. Adams because she and Susanna had conceived a warm friendship. After that, although we certainly did everything in our power to encourage them, no more children arrived, and we assumed—mistakenly, as we were to discover much later—that, for whatever reason, Susanna was incapable of bearing any more.

Parson Weems had retired to Georgetown across the river to work on his tracts, of which he issued a steady stream: “On the Falsity of All Human Traditions, Saving Certain Exceptions Herein Enumerated”; “On the Poor Fashion Sense of the Romish Hierarchy”; “An Inquiry into the Scandalously Immoral Behavior of Certain Orders of Nuns, with Numerous Woodcuts”; “Whether the Pope Possesses a Hidden Tail, with a Commentary on the Seventeenth Chapter of Revelation”; and other similar titles, most of which sold very well, assuring their author a comfortable living. He had them printed at the Gazette office in Alexandria, and would generally stop for dinner with us after a day at the printer’s; I was always glad to see him, and Susanna was at least polite to him, though she was not as fond of him as I was.

Of course we were frequent guests at Mount Vernon. Washington was not a man to forget loyal friends, and I believe Susanna, Parson Weems, and I saw more of him than did all the great men of the age who stopped to pay tribute to the greatest of them all, and to seek his advice, an experience that usually left them more baffled than they had been before they arrived.

In short, I will say that my own life was very pleasant in the few years after our victory in the War of Independence; and so, I believe, was Washington’s. Our country, however, was suffering.

The difficulty, as all agreed, lay in the Articles of Confederation. That agreement, hastily put together when the states were in the throes of their war for independence, gave us a national government that existed only at the whim of the states; and we soon discovered that the states could be quite whimsical. The Congress depended on the contributions of the states for its budget, and there were no consequences for states that failed to make the agreed-on contributions. Moreover, the Empire of Rhode Island and Providence Plantation showed a distressing tendency to bully the other states, which the Articles of Confederation provided no means of counteracting. Clearly some revisions were necessary, and it must be soon, preferably before Connecticut declared war on Rhode Island.

Thus the Congress voted to call a convention in Philadelphia for the purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation, and naturally Virginia chose Washington as one of her delegates.

“I should like to have you and Phillips with me,” Washington said when he told me about the convention. “Your steadying influence, and his incisive mind, will be of great use to me in Philadelphia. We ought to have Parson Weems as well, if he can spare the time, for a bit of spiritual advice would not come amiss at this important juncture.”

“I’ll have to ask Su— Phillips, but for my part I should be glad to offer whatever assistance I can give.”

Susanna was reluctant to leave the children for so long, though we had a capable and intelligent nurse whom they loved, and who would be more than adequate to the task of caring for them. “But on the other hand, if Virginia has chosen Washington, the other states have probably chosen the usual lot of imbeciles; and if I can be there to speak for sanity— Very well; we’ll go, and the children will come with us.”

“Is that wise?” I asked.

“Crispus is already speaking in complete sentences,” said Susanna. “Perhaps he can draft some of the articles.”

So it was done. We made slow progress to Philadelphia with Jane and Crispus, but they enjoyed the new sights along the way, and certainly Susanna and I were happier for not worrying about what might be happening to them at home.

When we arrived in Philadelphia, we found the preparations for the convention already in progress, and already encountering their first difficulty. Washington had grown considerably since the successful conclusion of the war. He was now a little over thirteen feet tall, and while this height presented no architectural problem in the ample chamber chosen for the convention, it was clear that none of the furniture was at all adequate to Washington’s current dimensions.

Here was a problem the convention would have to solve before it could even begin to address the perceived weaknesses in the Articles of Confederation. It was imperative that at least one chair be made in Washington’s size. Yet no one wished to be the one who drew attention to Washington’s unusual height. We all preferred not to mention it, and I was never quite sure how much Washington himself was aware of his own size. Furthermore, the pride of some of the other delegates would hardly admit of one delegate’s having an obviously larger seat than the rest. The representatives from Rhode Island, where size has often been a sensitive question, threatened to withdraw from the union altogether and form an independent and potentially hostile Empire if any Virginian sat in a chair whose dimensions exceeded those of the chairs occupied by Rhode Island by so much as a single inch.

In the end it was decided by the Standing Committee on Seating that all furniture in the hall should be so made as to accommodate any delegate up to fourteen feet tall. Thus the problem was addressed without any specific reference to Washington himself, and the feelings of smaller delegates were spared. Most of the delegates required stepladders, or for some of the more infirm hoisting tackle, to make the ascent into their seats; but the important thing was that harmony was preserved, and the convention was not irreparably split over questions of protocol before any of the more important issues had been dealt with.

Susanna and I did not attend the sessions with Washington, so we heard about the actual debates second-hand; but we heard them in great detail, for Washington loved to talk about them. The first debate, of course, was over the presidency of the convention, and as far as Washington was concerned there could be only one reasonable choice. Fortunately, he was able to make the other delegates see reason, or see how difficult it would be if they did not see things his way. The first day he came back to the inn where we were staying (a house with comfortably high fifteen-foot ceilings, and a large back parlor where we accommodated Washington by laying four beds side by side) to announce that he had been chosen president of the convention. Furthermore, he was quite pleased to find that his old friend Alexander Hamilton had come to the convention as the delegate from New-York state. “The men of New-York sent only one delegate,” said Washington, “and in this I believe they have shown wisdom; for one Hamilton is worth half a dozen of the rest. I believe his ‘one-dollar-one-vote’ proposal has a very good chance of acceptance.”

“One-dollar-one-vote?” I repeated.

“Hamilton explained it to me. It seems very clever. Each man would have a voting power proportional to his wealth, so that the burden of government falls most heavily upon those who most naturally have an interest in the stability of the Union.”

“I’d like to talk to Hamilton about that personally,” said Susanna. I did not like the way the fingers of her right hand were closing into a fist.

“The thing that worries me,” Washington continued, “is that the delegates from the Empire of Rhode Island and Providence Plantation have gone home and refused to have anything further to do with the convention. I hope that troublesome state is not bent on causing us more difficulties. We need the cooperation of all the states, for a civil war between Rhode Island and the other states would be destructive and unpleasant. However, we can only trust in our own wisdom to erect a government that will, by its obvious utility, recommend itself even to the mobs in Newport and Providence.”

“Perhaps,” Susanna suggested, “we ought to trust in God instead.”

We did in fact see quite a bit of Mr. Hamilton as the days went on. He often dined with us, and he spoke of his plans for a government “of the wealthy, by the wealthy, and for the wealthy” with great enthusiasm. I kept one eye on Susanna’s right fist, for there was something about Mr. Hamilton that unsettled her.

Eventually, however, it became clear that Hamilton’s most audacious proposals would not gain the support of most of the states. Many of the delegates, indeed, were insisting that every man should have a vote.

“Why every man?” Susanna asked when Washington brought us this news.

“That is indeed the question Hamilton has been asking. He believes that at least a property requirement—”

“No, I mean, why should the franchise be limited to men?”

“What do you mean? Would you have horses and mules vote as well?”

“Why should women not vote for their elected representatives? In all matters with which this government is concerned, they are equally affected. It is their homes that will be taxed, their husbands and sons who will be sent to war; it is they who will suffer most from bad government and benefit most from good.”

“Yes, Phillips,” replied Washington, “but women have not the analytical capacity which you and I enjoy. Surely you, of all people, with your exceptionally keen mind, can appreciate that difference. Your suggestion of extending the franchise to horses and mules may, however, be worthy of consideration.”

Susanna was about to say something in reply, but clearly thought better of it, and merely sat with her head down and her fingers on her temples. Many of her conversations with Washington seemed to end the same way.

The apportionment of representation in Congress was another difficulty that much concerned Washington. Susanna suggested an elegant compromise in which there would be two houses of Congress, like the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the one apportioned by population, and the other with equal representation from each state. This was eagerly adopted when Washington brought it up the next day, but then the question of how to determine the population of a state came up. The states of the South wished to have their slaves included; the states of the North, naturally, did not wish to concede so much influence to the South.

“They are still debating it—the representation question,” Washington told us one evening.

“They seem to be unable to face the real question of slavery,” said Susanna.

“And they have spent days debating,” Washington continued, “with no result that I can see other than frayed tempers and a considerable diminution of the Madeira stock.”

“It is because no one is bold enough to ask the real question,” said Susanna. “Instead they will talk themselves in circles, never touching on the one thing no one dares mention, until they are so weary of talking that they will make some absurd compromise and decide that a slave counts as, oh, three-fifths of a person, and then call it a job well done and hope no one ever reads the text.”

“Three-fifths of a person,” Washington repeated quietly. And then he suddenly brightened. “My word, Phillips, what a mind you have! Yes, that’s the answer!”

Susanna began to protest: “But I was just⁠—”

“Yes, yes, it solves the problem perfectly—an almost mathematical balance between the regions!”

“But it’s abs—”

“I must tell Hamilton at once!” He had risen and was already headed for the door, with that odd hunching walk he had developed in unconscious adaptation to the usual dimensions of interior doorways. “I don’t know what we’d do without you, Phillips! This is the best idea you’ve had since that Electoral College thing.” He ducked out the door.

“What? Wait—they adopted that too? But that was⁠⁠—”

The door closed.

“But that was a joke!” she almost wailed to the closed door. Then she turned to me. “Christopher, can we stop him?”

“I don’t think anything can stop the General once he has an idea stuck in his head.”

“But they’re making a hash of my country, and it’s all my fault!”

I stood and took her hand. “My dearest, the greatest minds of these United States are gathered here in Philadelphia. Every point in this new form of government is accepted only after mature deliberation.”

“Yes, but…” She laid her head on my shoulder. “But the greatest minds in these United States are all a bunch of imbeciles.”

Susanna was not well pleased when, the next day, Washington came back from the day’s session with the news that the “three-fifths” compromise had been accepted with minimal debate. She had to endure Washington’s congratulations over dinner, which she did with silent mortification; and Washington kept bringing up the subject for the rest of the evening, so that Susanna found it necessary to retire early on the excuse of a headache.

She was still awake when I joined her in bed, and she was still feeling gloomy. “I’ve made a mess of the Constitution,” she said as we lay in the dark (speaking quietly, so as not to wake the children), “and there’s nothing I can do to change it.”

“The Constitution need not be perfect,” I assured her. “It will still be better than the fraying fabric of Confederation.”

“But I’ve just increased the power of the slaveholders by an enormous amount. Slavery will simply wither away, you keep saying. Do you see it withering now?”

“With a strong federal government, the men of the North and East who oppose slavery will find partners in the South, and the institution will be ended peacefully, with minimal disruption. The alternative is disunion and bloodshed. You may have been responsible for saving the Union, Susanna, and averting a bloody civil war. In a few decades at most, slavery will be extinct, and⁠⁠—”

“And all the men and women and little helpless children who died as slaves will look down from heaven and say, ‘Thank you, Susanna Gist—thank you for letting us die without tasting freedom. Thank you for making sure⁠⁠—’ ”

She stopped. There was a loud whooping coming from downstairs, accompanied by rhythmic pounding. Washington was laughing.

“Someone must have told him a joke this afternoon,” I remarked.

The whooping continued, and then we very distinctly heard him shouting, “Three-fifths of a person!” Then more pounding, as of heels kicking on the floor.

Susanna turned over and pulled the coverlet over her head.

There were times, indeed, when it seemed to all of us that the convention must end in failure, and that no agreement could ever be reached among the states. Nature, however, proved our ally. The insupportable heat of a Philadelphia summer was now fully upon us. Curiously, the children seemed to grow more cheerful as the heat grew more oppressive; but Washington reported that the delegates were withering. More and more provisions were accepted in this new constitution simply because it was easier to say “yes” than to debate in the sweltering furnace where the convention was meeting. Washington told us that the delegates from Massachusetts had nearly got a constitutional prohibition of red chowder written into the document before Mr. Hamilton woke from his afternoon somnolence and vetoed it.

When at last the Constitution of the United States had been accepted by the convention, we returned home and awaited the verdict of the states. It took a year and a half, but at last the Constitution was ratified by the state conventions. Now there was much to be done. A whole national government had to be built from the very foundation. But in Washington’s mind there was really only one interesting question: who was to take on the exalted and onerous duties reserved in the Constitution for the President of the United States?

To be continued in Chapter XII.

By an Associate.

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Continuing the narrative that began here.

Chapter X.—New-York or Virginia?—Susanna presents the case for Virginia.—Plans for surrounding Cornwallis.—Susanna suggests amending the plans.—Surrender of Cornwallis.—Army discontented.—Plot to make Washington king.—Washington’s retirement.

We were now presented with a dilemma. Part of the British force was bottled up in New-York, where it might be possible, with the aid of the French fleet, to lay siege to them. The greater part, however, was in Virginia, where Cornwallis was perhaps planning a blow against Richmond, and thus might at a stroke cut off the South.

“To retake New-York,” I pointed out, “would be a great boost to American spirits.”

“But the army in Virginia,” Susanna said, “may do us more damage than the loss of New-York ever did, or even the loss of Philadelphia, which after all was only temporary. I think—begging your pardon, Chr— Mr. Gist—that we ought to strike boldly against Cornwallis; we may at least prevent him from cutting off the Carolinas and Georgia, and if we are bold enough, and fortunate enough, we might defeat Cornwallis altogether. Such a victory would, in effect, win the war, as without Cornwallis’ army the British could have no hope of success.”

“It sounds very well,” said Washington, “but how are we to be sure of victory against so great an army? Cornwallis has greater numbers on his side.”

“The French fleet, sir, will be essential,” replied Susanna. “Cornwallis, we hear, has taken a position on the peninsula. If the French can prevent his escape by water, and prevent his being reinforced or resupplied, then we need only block the land routes, and we have him.”

This seemed like good advice to Washington, and so Admiral de Grasse was summoned to a meeting with the General, at which La Fayette was also present, along with Susanna and me. We unrolled a large map of the peninsula between the York and James rivers, and the three great leaders studied it in intense silence for a while. At last Washington spoke.

“If we dispose our soldiers here, on the north and east, with Fayette’s French army on the south, then you, Admiral, should be able to cut off Cornwallis completely by water to the west.”

“Yes,” de Grasse agreed, “the plan, it is excellent. He shall not escape us, by blue.”

Susanna looked down at the map. “I believe, sirs, that you have mistaken the water for the land, and the land for the water. These wavy lines here, you see, indicate the water; the land is this area behind them, here.”

“Ah!” said Washington. “Thank you, Phillips. Well spotted. That is important information, and complicates the strategy considerably. We cannot expect the men to stand very long in water that is possibly up to their necks, or even over their heads. We shall need to make some adaptations; perhaps some sort of bridge or pier assembly, or better yet a series of floating wooden platforms with which we can surround the peninsula on three sides, and on which the men can stand dryshod for an indefinite period of time. It will require a good bit of wood, which will require a good bit of labor; although the labor will be hastened considerably if we can find any large stands of wild cherry. That will do for the army; but, unless I am very much mistaken, the disposition of the fleet will require at least as much thought and labor, if not more.”

“Very assuredly,” the Admiral agreed. “I believe that a construction of the rollers, made perhaps of the trunks of the trees, will be necessary for the placing of the ships in position, if indeed suitable trees find themselves nearby.”

“Well, there fortune favors us,” said Washington. “Tidewater Virginia has many stands of pine that grow straight and tall, with few branches until very near the top; such trees would, it seems to me, make admirable rollers for our purposes.”

Susanna was sitting with her head down, her eyes closed, and her fingers on her temples; but now she spoke again. “If I may be so bold, sirs, it might be better to reverse the positions of the army and the fleet.”

The General and the Admiral both looked at her blankly for a moment; then Washington spoke slowly and cautiously. “Do you mean, the army on the land, and the navy in the water?”

“Yes, sir,” Susanna said with care and patience. “Each force deployed in its native element, so to speak.”

“My word, Phillips! How much simpler that makes everything! You see, Admiral, why I insist on having Captain Phillips present whenever we discuss strategy. Captain Phillips? No, sir—Phillips, you are promoted to colonel as of this instant. We’ll skip lieutenant colonel—no point in lingering there, eh, Phillips? Well done.”

Later, as the meeting adjourned, I heard Admiral de Grasse ask Washington in a lowered voice, “That so brilliant young officer, the Colonel Phillips—is it that he perhaps appears pale to you?”

“I have often worried about that myself,” Washington replied, “but it seems to be his natural complexion. If he were not so valuable to me, I should insist that he take a few weeks’ rest; but, between us, Admiral, there are days when I do verily believe that our success in this war depends upon young Phillips.”

“It can be that you there have reason, General,” said the Admiral. “The army on the land and the navy in the water! Sacred blue! It is brilliant in its simplicity.”

As soon as it was practical, therefore, the French fleet set off for the Chesapeake; meanwhile the combined American and French armies marched southward. Everything went according to plan. Admiral de Grasse was in position with his fleet; the combined armies blocked the land route on the peninsula. Cornwallis was surrounded, and unless he fought his way up the peninsula, or unless a large British fleet defeated the French, he was helpless.

“And now what shall we do?” Washington asked at the council of war he had called.

“Nothing,” Susanna suggested.

“Nothing? But it seems to me that the ‘nothing’ strategy was ineffective at New-York, and I thought we had given it up.”

“There are times when nothing is effective, and times when it is not effective,” Susanna explained with all the patience in her power. “When something has to be done, then nothing will not do. But there are times when circumstances favor patience, and at such times waiting is preferable to action, which may risk an undesirable result. I believe this is one of those times. Provoking a battle risks defeat; keeping Cornwallis bottled up in the peninsula must deplete his resources and eventually induce him to surrender.”

“My word!” said Washington, “who would have thought that nothing would be so much more complicated than something?”

Hamilton spoke up. “It’s all very well to do nothing when nothing can be done, Su— uh, Colonel Phillips. But at any moment a British fleet may arrive in the bay, and then everything depends on the French ships, which may not be able to hold off a sufficiently powerful attack. Cornwallis knows this, and therefore Cornwallis will never surrender. It seems to me, therefore, that an immediate attack—”

“Excuse me, General,” said a young lieutenant who had appeared behind Washington.

“Just a moment, Hamilton,” said Washington, and he turned to the lieutenant. “What have you to report?”

“Lord Cornwallis is here, sir. He says he would like to surrender, if it’s not too much trouble.”

“Tell him it’s really no trouble at all,” said Washington. “I’ll be with him directly, as soon as I’ve heard what Hamilton has to say.” The lieutenant went off to deliver Washington’s reply, and Washington turned back to face Hamilton. “Now, Hamilton,” Washington said, “please continue what you were saying, and forgive the interruption.”

“As I say,” Hamilton resumed, “I believe Cornwallis, in his present circumstances, will never surrender; and it behooves us, therefore—”

“But, Hamilton,” Parson Weems interrupted him, “Cornwallis is surrendering right now.”

“But that is a mere fact,” Hamilton replied. “My argument is founded upon reason.”

“Then, since the facts demand our attention now,” said Susanna, “let us attend to them, and we may reserve reason for our leisure.”

“Well said, Phillips,” Washington concurred. “For there is a wise old saying—” He produced the copybook, and we waited for him to find the page, which had become more and more difficult for him to do as his fingers increased in size. “Here it is: ‘Do not jog the desk on which another is writing.’ I find it useful to have a fund of these proverbs ready to hand, so to speak, for they distill the wisdom of our elders to its essence. Let us now receive Lord Cornwallis as gentlemen.”

The men had helpfully found Cornwallis a barrel to stand on, so that he and Washington could see eye to eye. He was waiting there, and Washington immediately engulfed Cornwallis’ hand in his own.

“General,” said Washington, “welcome to our camp.”

“General Washington, sir,” replied Cornwallis, “it is a great pleasure to make your acquaintance at last.”

“Oh, I know what you mean. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you for ages. One never really gets to know a man when one is only firing cannonballs at him. I hope you don’t take it too personally, by the way—the cannonballs, I mean, and the defeat and such.”

“Certainly not. I have long since learned to expect that I shall often suffer such reverses, which I attribute entirely to the machinations of Willoughby.”

“Willoughby?” asked Washington.

“My mortal enemy—the most fiendishly devious and diabolically wicked stoat ever born. Of course he is not—

“—not visible in the strict sense! Ah, Cornwallis, I know exactly what you mean!”

“Of course you do, sir! I know that a man of your talents must have the same experience. It is the very mark of a commander’s greatness that he is pursued throughout his career—”

“—by the forces of envy and malice—”

“—personified in a malevolent invisible animal!” they both finished together.

“Mine is a mule named Irving,” Washington said.

“General Washington, it is a positive honor to surrender to a soldier of your caliber. I hope we can settle on gentlemanly terms.”

“Oh, yes, of course. I think it will be sufficient if you give me your word not to have anything more to do with fighting against the United States, and then you can be on your way.”

“My word as a gentleman,” said Cornwallis, extending his hand.

“I accept your word,” said Washington, taking the offered hand.

“But—” Hamilton sputtered, but Susanna and I both gestured to him to keep quiet.

“But how,” he continued quietly to us, “I mean—what guarantee do we have that he’ll keep his word?”

“He’ll keep his word,” Susanna insisted.

“But how do you know that?” Hamilton demanded in a hoarse whisper.

“I know it because he’s just as much of an imbecile as Washington is,” she replied. “And I sometimes wish the world were filled with such imbeciles.”

As Susanna had expected, the victory over Cornwallis virtually ended the war. It was true that no treaty of peace had been signed, and Sir Henry Clinton in New-York refused to recognize the de-facto victory of the American side, continuing to occupy the city with such forces as he had; but the United States could get along very well without the city of New-York, and did so for the next two years. Nor did Clinton ever admit defeat: he is still there, in a small house on Wall-street, with two aged captains for company, and occasionally issues orders to occupy Hartford or Albany or whatnot, which his captains receive with deference and alacrity, without, however, setting foot out the front door.

The army now had nothing to do, and idle men began to consider more carefully the question of their payment. Once again the Congress attempted to pay them in paper money, which the men rejected as not worth so much as the same paper without any printing on it. So discontented were the men that they began to speak openly of marching to Annapolis (where the Congress was meeting at the time) to have Washington made king: for they imagined that, once granted royal power, Washington would not be long in finding the means to pay them in specie. This plot came to the ears of Washington himself, who mentioned it over the Madeira one evening after supper in the old brick church he had made his headquarters, it being the only nearby building where his ten-foot figure could be comfortably accommodated. We had made a special table for him, with a chair his own height and a set of benches with stepladders so that we could all sit at the same table with him.

“Of course we do have the Articles of Confederation,” Washington said, “but I believe those must be regarded as a temporary measure. If we are to have a single nation rather than a rabble of thirteen unrelated States, we must adopt a form of government conducive to unity. A monarchy would, obviously, serve that purpose, and a careful choice of monarch is vital to the viability of our union. It ought to be—”

“Yes, we have been over this ground before,” said Susanna, “and we know that it ends at the conclusion that our ideal monarch would look very much like you, General Washington. But of course one doesn’t put oneself forward as seeking the kingship.”

“One doesn’t?”

“Modesty and diffidence are considered greatly desirable qualities in monarchs. Indeed, a monarch’s impassivity is precisely what makes him look like a monarch. It is essential to show that you do not desire the position of king, and that you would accept it only with extreme reluctance.”

“Do you think so? Yes, I can see how that might be true.”

“If you would like, I could draft you a few remarks, which you might use when the occasion presents itself.”

“Oh, would you, Phillips? That would be very kind of you.”

Later, as Susanna sat at the desk in our chamber writing some remarks for Washington to deliver extemporaneously, I asked her, “What exactly are you up to?”

“Kiss my neck and don’t ask questions,” she replied.

It was not long before the expected occasion did present itself. A gathering of junior officers and enlisted men formed in front of Washington’s church headquarters, and when Washington appeared at the door, they presented him with a set of resolutions calling upon him to lead the army to Annapolis and declare himself king.

Fortunately, Washington had laboriously memorized Susanna’s response. “Gentlemen,” said he, “I am sensible of the honor you do me in making this request, but at the same time I find it impossible to acquiesce. Are you not aware that we have spent seven years fighting a war not only against George III, but against the very institution of monarchy? Why, every man I see before me is a king on a throne of gold; for in our republic, gentlemen, the power rests with the people themselves, and not with some class of arbitrarily distinguished men who have no more natural parts than you have, and perhaps a great deal less good sense. Would you have me elevate myself above you, when we have fought so long and so hard for the principle that all men are created equal? No, gentlemen, so reluctant am I to abandon our shared republican principles that I could never desire the position of king, and only the direst circumstances would induce me to accept such an honor.”

At the conclusion of this speech, the men gave a mighty cheer, which pleased Washington very much; but what did not please him nearly so much was that they took him at his word, and did not make him king.

“Well,” said Susanna, “we tried our best.”

“We did,” Washington agreed; “the principle was inarguably sound, and our lack of success can only be attributed to the malice of Irving, who would not wish to see me crowned king if he could prevent it. Irving will yet be the death of me, you may be certain of that. But though he may prevent my elevation to the throne, I hope he will not be able to prevent my enjoying the fruits of our hard-won victory. The time has come for me to retire from public life, and to give my full attention to the development of my estate at Mount Vernon.”

With this surprising announcement, Washington abandoned all hope of becoming King of the United States. Shortly afterward, a formal peace was concluded, and Washington traveled to Annapolis to resign his commission before the Congress. He was able to witness personally the evacuation of New-York by the British, with the exception of Clinton and the two captains aforesaid; and then he retired to Mount Vernon, fully intending to remain there for the rest of his life.

To be continued in Chapter XI.

By an Associate.

---

Continuing the narrative that began here.

Chapter IX.—Washington and La Fayette meet.—They compare invisible animals.—Colonel de Trop reappears.—Baron von Steuben disciplines our army.—Washington’s tale of the three wine merchants, the innkeeper, the lady with the carbuncle pendant, the cursed sailor, the talking monkey, the ruined temple, and the cask of the best wine in the world.

“Général Washington, sir!—the hero of the American independence! I have great honor to meet you at last!”

“The honor is mine, General Fayette. I have heard much of your accomplishments in France.”

“Have you truly?” asked General La Fayette.

“Well, no. But I thought it would be a thing to say. Did it not sound well? We have arranged for you to make your headquarters in a small house nearby; not a palace, but commodious in its way.”

“Your consideration is very appreciated,” said La Fayette. “But tell me—is it that you have heard a sound, which one might describe as ‘yapping’?”

“Yapping? No, I don’t believe so.”

“Ah! It is good. I have fear that Sophie might have followed me from the France. One must be careful, you know.”

“A lady friend?” asked Washington.

“No! Sophie, she is caniche, yes? Poodle. My mortal enemy, though one sees her not.”

“And she lives to deepen your sorrows, to blast your victories, and to hound you to an early grave?”

“Yes! By blue, Washington, how is it that you knew?”

“My word, Fayette! I knew you were a great general the moment I saw you. All great military commanders (as I learned, sir, from one of the greatest of them all) are pursued throughout their careers by the forces of envy and malice, personified in malevolent invisible animals. I myself have been relentlessly dogged by the mule Irving.” Washington stooped down and shook General La Fayette’s hand warmly, and from that moment the two were the best of friends.

And then there appeared another officer from the clot of French soldiers, and it seemed that were was something familiar about him. But it was Washington who recognized him first.

“Lieutenant de Trop!” he called out in delight.

“It’s Colonel de Trop now,” the officer replied with a smile. “And my heavens, you are the same Washington I met at Fort Le Boeuf! But I believe you have grown somewhat taller.”

“I may have done, Colonel, but I have not outgrown my gratitude to you. You remember Mr. Gist, of course.”

I shook the colonel’s hand and exchanged polite greetings with him. Much later, when Washington and La Fayette had gone off together, I asked the colonel, “Is your name really de Trop?”

“General Washington,” he replied, “is a hero to every true Frenchman, and my name, sir, is whatever he wants it to be. And who is this very charming officer?” he asked, turning to Susanna.

“My wife Susanna,” I replied. “Susanna, this is Colonel, uh, de Trop, who was very courteous to us when Washington and I visited Fort Le Boeuf years ago.”

“Very pleased to meet you, sir,” Susanna said, offering her hand.

Instead of shaking her hand, the colonel raised it to his lips and kissed it. “Upon my faith, Mr. Gist, I should never have believed it if one had told it to me, but you Americans have made an improvement in gallantry of which we French had not even dreamed. What man would not beg to join your army if he might serve under such delightful officers?”

“Susanna is…unique,” I said.

“General Washington believes I am a man named Phillips,” Susanna explained. “And, as you say, my name is whatever he wants it to be.”

“And why, if I may be forgiven for asking, did you come into the army in the first place?” the colonel asked.

“It seemed to me, sir, that the military life would afford me more opportunities for indulging in my favorite pastime.”

“What is that, dear lady?” the colonel asked with a smile.

“Killing Redcoats,” she replied with a sweet smile of her own.

Before the colonel could make any answer to that, a loud voice came from behind him, rapidly approaching: “Mine God! This is what they an army call? It is not possible!”

“Oh,” said the colonel. “Mr. Gist, and, uh, Captain Phillips, this is a friend of General La Fayette’s, Baron von Steuben. Baron von Steuben, Captain Phillips and Mr. Gist.”

Ignoring the introduction, the Baron continued, “No uniforms of which to speak of, tents will he und also nill he distributed, no military exercises I see anywhere—this is the most ragged und tagged mess which I ever have seen! Und look you—negresses for officers!”

Susanna’s right hand was involuntarily closing into a fist. I gave her a warning glance, which was like giving a gentle word of admonition to an earthquake.

Fortunately Colonel de Trop intervened, desperately working to keep the conversation pleasant. “Baron von Steuben is a Prussian, and a great believer in military discipline.”

“Until today!” the Baron barked. “Now, mine God! I know not. Believe I even that military discipline exists? But yes, if my way I have, your American army disciplined shall be!”

“Oh,” I said. “Well…thank you.”

“Good luck,” Susanna added quietly.

In the morning Washington, Susanna, and I rose early and walked over to La Fayette’s headquarters, where we found him busy nailing a brass plaque to the door, a plaque on which was engraved,

ici dormit le marquis de la fayette

“Ah! Washington, my friend!” he said as he continued hammering. “You will forgive me for completing this task, but I wished to lose no time. Gratitude is like the concombre, yes?”

“I know precisely what you mean!” Washington exclaimed in delight. “Ah, Fayette, we shall get along famously.”

Meanwhile Baron von Steuben had gone around the camp and roused a large number of sergeants at dawn, and was now drilling them in an open field, shouting insults that they only half-comprehended.

“That will not end well for Steuben,” Susanna remarked.

I told her to give the man a chance.

“I am giving him a chance,” she replied. “I am giving him a chance to get a blackened eye from them instead of me.”

Later, as we were pulling Baron von Steuben out of the barrel of sauerkraut into which he had been thrust upside-down, Parson Weems suggested a small wager: which would kill the Baron first—the enlisted men or Susanna? I told him I did not believe in gambling, at which he reminded me that he wore the collar, not I. I in turn reminded him that Steuben would also have me to deal with if he offered any insult to Susanna, and therefore his wager did not take all the possibilities into account; but Weems replied, “No, Gist; for we both know, begging your pardon, that no insult to Susanna goes unavenged long enough for you to intervene.” To all this the Baron said nothing; but as soon as he was cleaned up, he was out drilling some enlisted men again, which I thought showed admirable patience.

Our supper that evening was delayed until Baron von Steuben had cleaned himself up after being pulled out of the latrine; but once we were all seated, we ate better than we had done in quite some time. The French had brought not only soldiers, but money as well, and it was remarkable how quickly supplies appeared for sale when it was known that there were golden louis to be had, as well as the Spanish milled dollars we had brought from Virginia. La Fayette, whose disposition was naturally generous, made sure the American soldiers ate as well as the French did. Cries of “Long live Fayette!” could be heard all over the camp. I was glad to see the men so happy, and I was also glad to share in the excellent claret which La Fayette had brought with him. Washington made sure, for his part, to bring out his finest Madeira. Soon a friendly dispute arose, with La Fayette contending for the superiority of French claret, and Washington taking the part of Madeira, while Steuben advanced the claims of the hock from the valley of the Moselle. After much discussion among the three of them, Washington proposed a toast to “Germany, France, and Madeira, which have labored so fruitfully to give us pleasure.” And then he continued:

“If it will not offend you, gentlemen, I should like to tell you a story, which was related to me by my late brother Lawrence; for it has no little bearing on the matter under discussion. Once, so it is said, there were three merchants: a seller of hock, a seller of claret, and a seller of Madeira; and as they traveled they happened to meet along the road. As their businesses were so similar, they naturally conceived friendly feelings one for another; and when evening came, they stopped together at the same inn.

“In this inn, they naturally fell to discussing the relative merits of their merchandise; and the innkeeper overhearing their conversation, that worthy gentleman approached them, saying, ‘Sirs, I have heard your dispute over which wine is the best, and I would have you know, gentlemen, that it is a question to which I alone possess the answer; for in that cask in the corner of the room, sirs, is the best wine in the world.’

“ ‘By all means,’ said the claret merchant, ‘let us try a sample of this wine; if it is truly the best in the world, we will not stick at the price.’

“ ‘I may not open the cask,’ the innkeeper replied, ‘for I have given my solemn word; nor have I ever tasted the wine myself.’

“ ‘But, good heavens, man, how can you say it is the best wine in the world,’ asked the merchant of Madeira, ‘if you have never even tasted it?’

“ ‘Ah,’ said the innkeeper, ‘it is because of the circumstances under which I received the cask; and when I have once narrated them to you, I am so certain that you will agree that this is the best wine in the world, that I will wager you your night’s accommodations on it. These circumstances, sirs, I will now relate.

“ ‘When I was some years younger, my father left me this inn, which to speak in very truth was not so much of an inheritance; for it was not as much frequented in those days, and many nights would pass when nary a traveler appeared. It was on one of those nights, when I had gone to bed already—for it was a night of intermittent but ferocious storms, and such a night as no wise traveler would choose for his journey,—it was on such a night, I say, that I was awakened by a pounding on the front door. Dressing hastily, I took a candle in my hand and descended the stairs, where the pounding still continued. As soon as I opened the door, a hooded figure dashed in past me and took a position in the parlor by the last dying embers of the fire. I closed the door and followed; but you may well imagine my surprise when the hood was thrown back to reveal the most beautiful face I have ever beheld in my life. It was a young woman, no more than one-and-twenty, with an ivory complexion brought into relief by cheeks flushed with carmine, and a cascade of loose hair as red as flame.

“ ‘ “Madam,” said I, “how may I be of assistance?”

“ ‘ “If you would be so good as to start the fire again, I should be most grateful,” she replied; “and then, sir, I have great need of a worthy man to whom I can entrust the priceless treasure that sits on the wagon outside.”

“ ‘ “If it be within my power to assist you,” I assured her, “you shall be assisted.”

“ ‘ “But I must first determine whether it is in your power,” said she. “When you have made the fire, I shall tell you my conditions.”

“ ‘It was the work of a moment to lay more logs and kindling on the fire and fan it into a roaring flame. As soon as the heat filled the room, the lady let her cloak fall; and if my eyes had been ravished before, you may be sure that I could barely speak now: for the lady was dressed, not for traveling, but for a grand ball, with innumerable jewels, the chief of which was a pendant that hung into her bosom and terminated in the most prodigious carbuncle I have ever seen, or ever heard tell of.

“ ‘ “And now, sir,” said she, “you have the right to know who I am, and why I must demand that you be worthy of my trust; for the favor I have to ask of you may seem a slight thing, but I had rather lose my life than entrust my treasure to anyone unworthy. When you know the facts of the case, sir, you will understand what I mean.

“ ‘ “My father, sir, was a gentleman who, if he was not worthy to be denominated rich, was at least comfortable in life, save that he had lost the one comfort for which he would have exchanged all the others; that is, his wife, my mother, who died when I was but an infant. He always showed the most tender regard for me, and (you will pardon a tear or two) he made sure that I lacked nothing which could tend to my happiness.

“ ‘ “Nevertheless, as his only daughter, I was perforce much alone, and as I grew into a young woman, I was much addicted to long walks in the country round about our house. On one of those perambulations I met a young man walking the other way; we talked; we parted with the intention of meeting again on the morrow; and that night, sir, I thought of nothing but Christian (for Christian was the name of this young man), and in the morning counted the hours till I should meet him again. I shall be brief: we met each day after that, and the more I saw of him, the more my heart yearned for him. Nor did he appear to be without feeling for me; a thousand times he seemed on the verge of speaking his heart, and a thousand times stopped himself, until at last I could forbear no longer, and spoke to him boldly:

“ ‘ “ ‘If you have somewhat to say to me, Christian,’ said I, ‘let not doubt stand in your way; for believe me, my disposition is such that I would hear whatever you would say most willingly.’

“ ‘ “At this he sighed piteously and replied, ‘Alas, dear Eleanor, would that I could speak what is in my heart; but if I were to do so, it would mean death to one who in no wise deserves to die.’

“ ‘ “ ‘What can you mean by that?’ I asked. ‘Have you a wife already? For if you have, I conjure you to return to her at once and—’

“ ‘ “ ‘I have no wife,’ he said, interrupting me, ‘but what I have is far more of an impediment: indeed, I should not scruple to call it a curse.’

“ ‘ “ ‘No curse,’ said I, ‘is without hope, so long as we trust in God and despair not.’

“ ‘ “ ‘My curse, however,’ said he, ‘is so nearly hopeless that despair is but reason; for it can be broken in only one way, and that a very unlikely one. Yet until the curse is broken, the very night I take a wife, an innocent man must die the most ignominious of deaths.’

“ ‘ “I own that my heart sank at these words, but I persisted in believing that no curse could be without its remedy. ‘How can this be?’ I asked. ‘Is there nothing within your power,—or—or mine,—which would lift this terrible curse from your head?’

“ ‘ “ ‘Whether it be within your power I shall leave you to judge,’ said he, ‘when you have heard my tale, which is one of the most marvelous, and yet one of the most tragic, ever told by mortal lips.

“ ‘ “ ‘I was the youngest son of a gentleman who, though he possessed many virtues, had a weakness for cards, so that he had squandered most of his fortune by the time I reached my majority. Having no other prospects, I determined to go to sea, and found a place aboard a ship owned by a prosperous wine-merchant. The duties were hard, but I was capable, and had fate not made other plans for me, I might still be a sailor today.

“ ‘ “ ‘On my very first voyage, however, a tempest arose from the west, and buffeted our poor ship so severely that we were constrained to toss our cargo over the rail. When it came to the last cask, however, the merchant was so reluctant to part with it that he and the captain began a struggle that might had terminated with the death of one of them, had Nature herself not intervened by giving the boat such a toss at that moment that the barrel flew overboard on its own. At this the merchant was so wildly distraught that he began tearing his hair and shouting at the sailors to leap after the cask; and, finding no one willing to do so, he rushed against me, and, before I knew what he was about, had thrust me overboard. I struggled in the water and called for help, but in vain; the ship and I were so rapidly parted that no one could even contemplate my rescue. The cask, however, was floating close at hand, and I was able to haul myself up on it and ride out the tempest in that manner.

“ ‘ “ ‘For two days I floated on that cask, which I dared not pierce for fear of sinking it. A merciful Providence, after the tempest, sent me occasional light rains, which, forming puddles on the top of the cask, gave me sufficient fresh water to drink. On the third day, I spotted an island, and to my inexpressible joy the wind and current carried me straight to the sandy shore, where I was deposited gently by the lapping waves.

“ ‘ “ ‘Having thanked the Almighty for delivering me from the grasp of the sea, I took a look at my surroundings. The beach was bordered by a forest of palms and tropical trees, which I hoped might yield some sort of fruit; and indeed so it proved. So delighted was I by my discovery that I must have spent half an hour picking the grape-like berries of a species of palm before I noticed that, in the distance, I could hear the sound of rushing water—not the sea, but a steady sound from the interior of the island. Following the sound, I made my way through the verdant forest, until I came upon a scene that took my breath away; for there was a cascade of water at least a hundred feet high, and beside it a ruined temple festooned with barbarous but skillful carvings. Having drunk my fill of the clear water, I turned my attention to the exotic beauty of the temple, which was somewhat overgrown with vines, but still intact enough that the artistic taste of the architect and sculptors was evident. Monkeys chattered at me from the roof, and birds called from the trees, but there was no evidence that any man had set foot here within recent memory.

“ ‘ “ ‘Enough of the roof was left that it seemed to me the temple would make an admirable shelter for the night. I entered, and found myself between two rows of columns, each column covered with intricate reliefs, and the whole interior drawing the eye to a statue of a woman or goddess at the other end. The woman was represented as seated, and even in that position the statue was at least fifteen feet high; it was of remarkable beauty; but what captivated me most was the way the eyes appeared to glow with a deep red light. As I approached more nearly, I perceived that the apparent glow was the glinting of two prodigious carbuncles which served the statue for eyes.

“ ‘ “ ‘I am not by nature a greedy man, but it seemed to me that two such jewels in a temple long abandoned were doing no one any good, and therefore might as well belong to me as to anyone else. I approached the statue, scattering a troop of monkeys, and began to climb it; and I was just stretching forth my hand to grasp the carbuncle in the left eye when a voice right beside me spoke:

“ ‘ “ ‘ “ ’Tis not for mortal hands to touch the eye of the goddess!”

“ ‘ “ ‘I looked, but saw only a monkey sitting on the shoulder of the statue. “Who spoke?” I asked, and you may be sure that I was quite astonished when the monkey replied,

“ ‘ “ ‘ “I spoke—I, the guardian of the temple.”

“ ‘ “ ‘ “But you are a monkey,” said I, lowering myself to sit on the knee of the statue. “How is it that you speak, and in my own tongue?”

“ ‘ “ ‘ “That,” replied the monkey, “is my curse, and my blessing, and I cannot explain more, unless I tell you my history.”

“ ‘ “ ‘ “Nothing would delight me more,” said I; “for until now I believed myself alone on this island.”

“ ‘ “ ‘ “Then I shall be happy to tell you,” said the monkey, sitting on the other knee of the statue. “I was not always a monkey. I was born a man like you, and in the course of time became the priest of this temple. I performed my duties, I believe, most assiduously; and the temple prospered under my care, until one day three men came to the island from far away, and stopped at my temple, evidently with the intention of persuading me to purchase something from them.

“ ‘ “ ‘ “ ‘I,’ said the first, ‘am a seller of hock, which is without a doubt the finest wine in the world.’

“ ‘ “ ‘ “ ‘Begging your pardon, sir,’ said the second, ‘but I contend that the claret of the blessed land of Bordeaux, which I have the honor to sell, surpasses all other wines whatsoever.’

“ ‘ “ ‘ “ ‘Neither of them,’ said the third, ‘can hold a candle to my Madeira.’ ” ’ ” ’

“And that, gentlemen, is the story my brother Lawrence told me,” Washington concluded.

There was silence in the room for half a minute, and then Parson Weems demanded, “What? Where is the rest of it? What of the priest who turned into a monkey?”

“And the curse of the man who must die an ignominious death?” added Susanna.

“And the beautiful red-haired lady?”

“With the prodigious carbuncle pendant?”

“And the ball gown on a stormy night?”

“And her love for the cursed young man?”

“And the innkeeper who must prove himself worthy?”

“And the cask of the best wine in the world?”

“Which he can know is the best without tasting it?”

“And the three men who wagered their night’s lodging?”

“That was the way the story always ended when Lawrence told it,” said Washington. “I remember specifically because that was always where his wife came in and said, ‘Lawrence! Are you filling little Georgie’s head with that nonsense again? You know what my Uncle Henry said about those stories. He said, “I met a man once who started to tell a story that went like this: ‘Once there—’ ” ’ ”

“No!” cried Susanna. Then, seeing that all eyes had turned to her, she added, “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”

The arrival of the French changed the balance of the war considerably. The British evacuated Philadelphia almost immediately, and French fleets gave the British navy no end of trouble on the seas. Furthermore, the discipline introduced by Baron von Steuben had a salutary effect on our army. By coordinating their efforts to drop the Baron down wells, tar and feather him, &c., the men learned to work together as a unit.

For three more years the fortunes of war favored first one side and then the other, but it was becoming more and more difficult for the British to hold any temporary gains they had made. Eventually, when the news came that Cornwallis had landed his army in Virginia, it seemed that the time had come for a decisive stroke.

To be continued in Chapter X. Or you can order the whole book now and spare yourself the wait.