Thanks to these precautions, the little cavalcade that left Virginia on February 4, 1756, must have looked brilliant enough as they rode away through the dark woods.  First came the colonel, mounted of course on the finest of animals, for he loved and understood horses from the time when he rode bareback in the pasture to those later days when he acted as judge at a horse-race and saw his own pet colt “Magnolia” beaten.  In this expedition he wore, of course, his uniform of buff and blue, with a white and scarlet cloak over his shoulders, and a sword-knot of red and gold.  His “horse furniture” was of the best London make, trimmed with “livery lace,” and the Washington arms were engraved upon the housings.  Close by his side rode his two aides, likewise in buff and blue, and behind came his servants, dressed in the Washington colors of white and scarlet and wearing hats laced with silver.  Thus accoutred, they all rode on together to the North.

The colonel’s fame had gone before him, for the hero of Braddock’s stricken field and the commander of the Virginian forces was known by reputation throughout the colonies.  Every door flew open to him as he passed, and every one was delighted to welcome the young soldier.  He was dined and wined and feted in Philadelphia, and again in New York, where he fell in love at apparently short notice with the heiress Mary Philipse, the sister-in-law of his friend Beverly Robinson.  Tearing himself away from these attractions he pushed on to Boston, then the most important city on the continent, and the head-quarters of Shirley, the commander-in-chief.  The little New England capital had at that time a society which, rich for those days, was relieved from its Puritan sombreness by the gayety and life brought in by the royal officers.  Here Washington lingered ten days, talking war and politics with the governor, visiting in state the “great and general court,” dancing every night at some ball, dining with and being feted by the magnates of the town.  His business done, he returned to New York, tarried there awhile for the sake of the fair dame, but came to no conclusions, and then, like the soldier in the song, he gave his bridle-rein a shake and rode away again to the South, and to the harassed and ravaged frontier of Virginia.

How much this little interlude, pushed into a corner as it has been by the dignity of history,—­how much it tells of the real man!  How the statuesque myth and the priggish myth and the dull and solemn myth melt away before it!  Wise and strong, a bearer of heavy responsibility beyond his years, daring in fight and sober in judgment, we have here the other and the more human side of Washington.  One loves to picture that gallant, generous, youthful figure, brilliant in color and manly in form, riding gayly on from one little colonial town to another, feasting, dancing, courting, and making merry.  For him the myrtle and ivy were entwined with the laurel, and fame was sweetened by youth.  He was righteously ready to draw from life all the good things which fate and fortune then smiling upon him could offer, and he took his pleasure frankly, with an honest heart.