of Madeira wine.  This, with one small glass of punch, a draught of beer, and two dishes of tea (which he takes half an hour before sun-setting) constitutes his whole sustenance till the next day.”  (Stearns.) Ashbel Green relates that at the state banquets during the Presidency Washington “generally dined on one single dish, and that of a very simple kind.  If offered something either in the first or second course which was very rich, his usual reply was—­’That is too good for me.’” It is worth noting that he religiously observed the fasts proclaimed in 1774 and 1777, going without food the entire day.

A special liking is mentioned above.  In 1782 Richard Varick wrote to a friend, “General Washington dines with me to-morrow; he is exceedingly fond of salt fish; I have some coming up, & tho’ it will be here in a few days, it will not be here in time—­If you could conveniently lend me as much fish as would serve a pretty large company to-morrow (at least for one Dish), it will oblige me, and shall in a very few days be returned in as good Dun Fish as ever you see.  Excuse this freedom, and it will add to the favor.  Could you not prevail upon somebody to catch some Trout for me early to-morrow morning?” When procurable, salt codfish was Washington’s regular Sunday dinner.

A second liking was honey.  His ledger several times mentions purchases of this, and in 1789 his sister wrote him, “when I last had the Pleasure of seeing you I observ’d your fondness for Honey; I have got a large Pot of very fine in the comb, which I shall send by the first opportunity.”  Among his purchases “sugar candy” is several times mentioned, but this may have been for children, and not for himself.  He was a frequent buyer of fruit of all kinds and of melons.

He was very fond of nuts, buying hazelnuts and shellbarks by the barrel, and he wrote his overseer in 1792 to “tell house Frank I expect he will lay up a more plenteous store of the black common walnuts than he usually does.”  The Prince de Broglie states that “at dessert he eats an enormous quantity of nuts, and when the conversation is entertaining he keeps eating through a couple of hours, from time to time giving sundry healths, according to the English and American custom.  It is what they call ‘toasting.’”

Washington was from boyhood passionately fond of horsemanship, and when but seventeen owned a horse.  Humphreys states that “all those who have seen General Washington on horseback, at the head of his army, will doubtless bear testimony with the author that they never saw a more graceful or dignified person,” and Jefferson said of him that he was “the best horseman of his age, and the most graceful figure that could be seen on horseback.”  His diary shows that he rode on various occasions as much as sixty miles in a day, and Lawrence reports that he “usually rode from Rockingham to Princeton, which is five miles, in forty minutes.”  John Hunter, in a visit to Mount Vernon in 1785, writes that he went