Laziness in his employees gave our Farmer a vast deal of unhappiness.  It was an enemy that he fought longer and more persistently than he fought the British.  In his early career a certain “Young Stephens,” son of the miller, seems to have been his greatest trial.  “Visited my Plantations,” he confides to his diary.  “Severely reprimanded young Stephens for his Indolence, and his father for suffering it.”  “Visited my Quarters & ye Mill according to custom found young Stephens absent.”  “Visited my Plantations and found to my great surprise Stephens constantly at work.”  “Rid out to my Plantn. and to my Carpenters.  Found Richard Stephens hard at work with an ax—­very extraordinary this!”

To what extent the change proved permanent we do not know.  But even though the reformation was absolute, it mattered little, for each year produces a new crop of lazybones just as it does “lambs” and “suckers.”

Enough has been said to show that our Farmer was impatient, perhaps even a bit querulous, but innumerable incidents prove that he was also generous and just.  Thus when paper currency depreciated to a low figure he, of his own volition, wrote to Lund Washington that he would not hold him to his contract, but would pay his wages by a share in the crops, and this at a time when his own debtors were discharging their indebtedness in the almost worthless paper.

If ever a square man lived, Washington was that man.  He believed in the Golden Rule and he practiced it—­not only in church, but in business.  It was not for nothing that as a boy he had written as his one hundred tenth “Rule of Civility”:  “Labor to keep alive in your Breast that Little Spark of Celestial fire called Conscience.”

In looking through his later letters I came upon one, dated January 7, 1796, from Pearce stating that Davenport, a miller whom Washington had brought from Pennsylvania, was dead.  He had already received six hundred pounds of pork and more wages than were due him as advances for the coming year.  What should be done? asked the manager.  “His Wife and Children will be in a most Distressed Situation.”  As I examined the papers that followed I said to myself:  “I will see if I know what his answer will be.”  I thought I did, and so it proved.  Back from Philadelphia came the answer: 

“Altho’ she can have no right to the Meat, I would have none of it taken from her.—­You may also let her have middlings from the Mill,—­and until the house may become indispensably necessary for the succeeding Miller, let her remain in it.—­As she went from these parts she can have no friends (by these I mean relations) where she is.  If therefore she wishes to return back to his, or her own relations, aid her in doing so.”