In one of his account books I find two pages devoted to striking a balance between what he won and what he lost from January 7, 1772, to January 1, 1775.  In that time he won L72.2.6 and lost L78.5.9.  Hence we find the entry:  “By balance against Play from Jany. 1772 to this date ...  L6.3.3.”  But he must have had a lot of fun at a cost of that six pounds three shillings and three pence!

It should be remarked here that gaming was then differently regarded in Virginia from what it is now.  Many even of the Episcopal clergymen played cards for money and still kept fast hold upon their belief that they would go to Heaven.

The same may also be said of lotteries, in which Washington now and then took a flier.  Many of the churches of that day, even in New England, were built partly or wholly with money raised in that way.  January 5, 1773, Washington states that he has received sixty tickets in the Delaware lottery from his friend Lord Stirling and that he has “put 12 of the above Sixty into the Hands of the Revd.  Mr. Magowan to sell.”  And “the Revd.” sold them too!

In his journal of the trip to Barbadoes taken with his brother Lawrence we find that on his way home he attended “a Great Main of cks [cocks] fought in Yorktown between Gloucester & York for 5 pistoles each battle & 10 ye. odd.”  Occasionally he seems to have witnessed other mains, but I have found no evidence that he made the practice in any sense a habit.

As a counterweight to his interest in so brutal a sport I must state that he was exceedingly fond of afternoon teas and of the social enjoyments connected with tea drinking.  Tea was regularly served at his army headquarters and in summer afternoons on the Mount Vernon veranda.

There is abundant evidence that he also enjoyed horse racing.  In September, 1768, he mentions going “to a Purse race at Accotinck,” a hamlet a few miles below Mount Vernon where a race track was maintained.  In 1772 he attended the Annapolis races, being a guest of the Governor of Maryland, and he repeated the trip in 1773.  In the following May he went to a race and barbecue at Johnson’s Ferry.  George Washington Custis tells us that the Farmer kept blooded horses and that his colt “Magnolia” once ran for a purse, presumably losing, as if the event had been otherwise we should probably have been informed of the fact.  In 1786 Washington went to Alexandria “to see the Jockey Club purse run for,” and I have noticed a few other references to races, but I conclude that he went less often than some writers would have us believe.

Washington was decidedly an outdoor man.  Being six feet two inches tall, and slender rather than heavily made, he was well fitted for athletic sports.  Tradition says that he once threw a stone across the Rappahannock at a spot where no other man could do it, and that he could outjump any one in Virginia.  He also excelled in the game of putting the bar, as a story related by the artist Peale bears witness.