A picture of the Farmer out upon his rounds in these last days has been left us by his adopted son, George Washington Parke Custis.  Custis relates that one day when out with a gun he met on the forest road an elderly gentleman on horseback who inquired where he could find the General.  The boy told the stranger, who proved to be Colonel Meade, once of Washington’s staff, that the General was abroad on the estate and pointed out what direction to take to come upon him.  “You will meet, sir, with an old gentleman riding alone in plain drab clothes, a broad-brimmed white hat, a hickory switch in his hand, and carrying an umbrella with a long staff, which is attached to his saddle-bow—­that person, sir, is General Washington.”

Those were pleasant rides the old Farmer took in the early morning sunshine, with the birds singing about him, the dirt lanes soft under his horse’s feet, and in his nostrils the pure air fragrant with the scent of pines, locust blossoms or wild honeysuckle.  When he grew thirsty he would pause for a drink at his favorite gum spring, and as he made his rounds would note the progress of the miller, the coopers, the carpenters, the fishermen, and the hands in the fields, how the corn was coming up or the wheat was ripening, what fences needed to be renewed or gaps in hedges filled, what the increase of his cattle would be, whether the stand of clover or buckwheat was good or not.  He was the owner of all this great estate, he was proud of it; it was his home, and he was glad to be back on it once more.  For he had long since realized that there are deeper and more satisfying pleasures than winning battles or enjoying the plaudits of multitudes.

An English actor named John Bernard who happened to be in Virginia in this period has left us a delightfully intimate picture of the Farmer on his rounds.  Bernard had ridden out below Alexandria to pay a visit and on his return came upon an overturned chaise containing a man and a woman.  About the same time another horseman rode up from the opposite direction.  The two quickly ascertained that the man was unhurt and managed to restore the wife to consciousness, whereupon she began to upbraid her husband for carelessness.

“The horse,” continues Bernard, “was now on his legs, but the vehicle was still prostrate, heavy in its frame and laden with at least half a ton of luggage.  My fellow-helper set me an example of activity in relieving it of internal weight; and when all was clear we grasped the wheel between us and to the peril of our spinal columns righted the conveyance.  The horse was then put in and we lent a hand to help up the luggage.  All this helping, hauling and lifting occupied at least half an hour under a meridian sun, in the middle of July, which fairly boiled the perspiration out of our foreheads.”

After the two Samaritans had declined a pressing invitation to go to Alexandria and have a drop of something, the unknown, a tall man past middle age, wearing a blue coat and buckskin breeches, exclaimed impatiently at the heat and then “offered very courteously,” says Bernard, “to dust my coat, a favor the return of which enabled me to take a deliberate survey of his person.”