[Illustration:  SAVAGE’S PICTURE OF THE WASHINGTON FAMILY]

When acting as chain-bearer in 1785, while Washington was surveying a tract of land, William fell and broke his knee-pan, “which put a stop to my surveying; and with much difficulty I was able to get him to Abington, being obliged to get a sled to carry him on, as he could neither walk, stand or ride.”  From this injury Lee never quite recovered, yet he started to accompany his master to New York in 1789, only to give out on the road.  He was left at Philadelphia, and Lear wrote to Washington’s agent that “The President will thank you to propose it to Will to return to Mount Vernon when he can be removed for he cannot be of any service here, and perhaps will require a person to attend upon him constantly.  If he should incline to return to Mount Vernon, you will be so kind as to have him sent in the first Vessel that sails for Alexandria after he can be moved with safety—­but if he is still anxious to come on here the President would gratify him, altho’ he will be troublesome—­He has been an old and faithful Servant, this is enough for the President to gratify him in every reasonable wish.”

By his will Washington gave Lee his “immediate freedom or if he should prefer it (on account of the accidents which have befallen him and which have rendered him incapable of walking or of any active employment) to remain in the situation he now is, it shall be optional in him to do so—­ In either case however I allow him an annuity of thirty dollars during his natural life which shall be independent of the victuals and cloaths he has been accustomed to receive; if he chuses the last alternative, but in full with his freedom, if he prefers the first, and this I give him as a testimony of my sense of his attachment to me and for his faithful services during the Revolutionary War.”

Two small incidents connected with Washington’s last illness are worth noting.  The afternoon before the night he was taken ill, although he had himself been superintending his affairs on horseback in the storm most of the day, yet when his secretary “carried some letters to him to frank, intending to send them to the Post Office in the evening,” Lear tells us “he franked the letters; but said the weather was too bad to send a servant up to the office that evening.”  Lear continues, “The General’s servant, Christopher, attended his bed side & in the room, when he was sitting up, through his whole illness....  In the [last] afternoon the General observing that Christopher had been standing by his bed side for a long time—­made a motion for him to sit in a chair which stood by the bed side.”

A clause in Washington’s will directed that