George seems never to have mentioned who the "lowland beauty" was. Various young ladies have been pointed out as the boy's mysterious charmer, but they are merely guesses. There is a tradition that she was a belle of Westmoreland County, not far from the Oak Grove School. If so, that may have been the reason he was called home from Austin's before he was through Mr. Williams's instruction. A boy of fourteen was entirely too young to be mooning over "lowland beauties" instead of his lessons.

It is believed by many that this girl was a Miss Lucy Grymes, who was afterward married to George's friend, Richard Henry Lee, the "Dickey" to whom he wrote about the elephant and whip-top before he was ten. If so, she became the mother of "Light Horse Harry" Lee, a gallant young officer in the Revolution, who was the father of General Robert E. Lee.

Among other symptoms of the boyish ailment, George took to writing what he called poetry, which he copied into "The Young Man's Companion." It proves that the Washington boy was not a poetic genius. After he grew to be a man he really fell in love. Then he did not write verses about the lady, nor tell everybody his sub

lime heartache. He was content to inform the lady herself what he thought of her, in plain, sober prose. This evidently pleased her better than the following crude and laborious lovelines, found written in among his arithmetic tables and cash accounts, could ever have done:

"Oh ye gods! why should my poor re-
sistless heart

Stand to oppose thy might and
Power?

At last surrender to Cupid's feather'd
dart

And now lies bleeding every hour
For her that's pitiless of my grief and

woes

And will not on me Pity take;

He sleeps amongst my most inveterate
foes

And with gladness never wish to
to wake, etc."

George doubtless thought he knew the meaning of all this! It shows, at least, his restless, though not unhappy, state of mind. He must have copied and patched parts of it together with some one's help, for it is spelled more correctly than most of his writing at this age.

There were, apparently, other "beauties" to whom he thought it worth while to dedicate different lines, but filled with the same allusions to "Cupid's darts" and "love's pains." The following is an acrostic in which the first letter of each line, read downward, spells the lady's name, "F-R-A-N-C-E-S A-L-E-X-A"--which may have been meant for a Miss Alexander, who lived not far from Mount Vernon.

It is not known whether he ever finished this, for the next leaf in his memorandum book is missing. Poor George seems to have had double difficulties, with the initials at one end of the lines and the rhymes at the other:

"From your bright sparkling eyes I was
undone;

Rays, you have; more transparent than

the sun,

Amidst its glory in the rising day

None can you equal in your bright

array;

Constant in your calm and unspotted
mind;

Equal to all, but will to none prove

kind,

So knowing, seldom one so young,
you'll find.

Ah! woe's me, that I should love and
conceal

Long have I wish'd, but never dare re

veal,

Even though severely love's pains I
feel;

Xerxes that great wasn't free from
Cupid's dart,

And all the greatest heroes, felt the
smart."

CHAPTER VI

GEORGE'S FIRST SURVEY AND JOURNAL

GEORGE made such progress that Lord Fairfax proposed to send him over the Blue Ridge Mountains with Mr. Genn, the licensed surveyor, and his chum, George Fairfax, then a young man of twenty-two, to begin a systematic survey of his vast estates.

This proposal naturally roused the mother's opposition, for it would mean a longer separation than she liked, and send her boy among many dangers, from the savages and the "squat

ters" (settlers) on his lordship's lan would regard a survey as a menace fr foreign owner of the homes which they their own. Also, the rivers would be sw the early spring, and the forests abou wild beasts and rattlesnakes.

But George's eagerness, backed by the man's influence, combined with the fact t youth would begin at once to earn his seems to have won the consent of the The brothers, and Virginians in general to the old English notion that working f no matter how necessary or how liberal, most a disgrace to a "gentleman."

But George took great satisfaction ability to do work that was worth a good It gave him the feeling that he was go something, and a pleasant sense of self-r and independence. He would enjoy cong the obstacles of the surveyor-rivers, snakes, Indians, surly settlers and allhe had found satisfaction in mastering u colts.

He thought it would be rare fun to go o an adventure into the new country with other George," and he would be glad ind