for I will not have my feelings hurt with complaints of this sort, nor lye under the imputation of starving my negros, and thereby driving them to the necessity of thieving to supply the deficiency.  To prevent waste or embezzlement is the only inducement to allowancing of them at all—­for if, instead of a peck they could eat a bushel of meal a week fairly, and required it, I would not withhold or begrudge it them.”  At Christmas-time there are entries in his ledger for whiskey or rum for “the negroes,” and towards the end of his life he ordered the overseer, “although others are getting out of the practice of using spirits at Harvest, yet, as my people have always been accustomed to it, a hogshead of Rum must be purchased; but I request at the same time, that it may be used sparingly.”

A greater kindness of his was, in 1787, when he very much desired a negro mason offered for sale, yet directed his agent that “if he has a family, with which he is to be sold; or from whom he would reluctantly part, I decline the purchase; his feelings I would not be the means of hurting in the latter case, nor at any rate be incumbered with the former.”

The kindness thus indicated bore fruit in a real attachment of the slaves for their master.  In Humphreys’s poem on Washington the poet alluded to the negroes at Mount Vernon in the lines,—­

“Where that foul stain of manhood, slavery, flow’d
Through Afric’s sons transmitted in the blood;
Hereditary slaves his kindness shar’d,
For manumission by degrees prepar’d: 
Return’d from war, I saw them round him press,
And all their speechless glee by artless signs express.”

And in a foot-note the writer added, “The interesting scene of his return home, at which the author was present, is described exactly as it existed.”

A single one of these slaves deserves further notice.  His body-servant “Billy” was purchased by Washington in 1768 for sixty-eight pounds and fifteen shillings, and was his constant companion during the war, even riding after his master at reviews; and this servant was so associated with the General that it was alleged in the preface to the “forged letters” that they had been captured by the British from “Billy,” “an old servant of General Washington’s.”  When Savage painted his well-known “family group,” this was the one slave included in the picture.  In 1784 Washington told his Philadelphia agent that “The mulatto fellow, William, who has been with me all the war, is attached (married he says) to one of his own color, a free woman, who during the war, was also of my family.  She has been in an infirm condition for some time, and I had conceived that the connexion between them had ceased; but I am mistaken it seems; they are both applying to get her here, and tho’ I never wished to see her more, I cannot refuse his request (if it can be complied with on reasonable terms) as he has served me faithfully for many years.  After premising this much, I have to beg the favor of you to procure her a passage to Alexandria.”