me.  Pray, would not the word curiosity answer as well?  And how different this from having a few social friends at a cheerful board.  The usual time of sitting at table, a walk, and tea bring me within the dawn of candle-light; previous to which, if not prevented by company, I resolve that as soon as the glimmering taper supplies the place of the great luminary I will retire to my writing-table and acknowledge the letters I have received; that when the lights are brought I feel tired and disinclined to engage in this work, conceiving that the next night will do as well.  The next night comes and with it the same causes for postponement, and so on.  Having given you the history of a day, it will serve for a year, and I am persuaded you will not require a second edition of it.  But it may strike you that in this detail no mention is made of any portion of time allotted for reading.  The remark would be just, for I have not looked into a book since I came home; nor shall I be able to do it until I have discharged my workmen; probably not before the nights grow longer, when possibly I may be looking in Doomsday book.”

There is not much that can be added to his own concise description of the simple life he led at home.  The rest and quiet were very pleasant, but still there was a touch of sadness in his words.  The long interval of absence made the changes which time had wrought stand out more vividly than if they had come one by one in the course of daily life at home.  Washington looked on the ruins of Belvoir, and sighed to think of the many happy hours he had passed with the Fairfaxes, now gone from the land forever.  Other old friends had been taken away by death, and the gaps were not filled by the new faces of which he speaks to McHenry.  Indeed, the crowd of visitors coming to Mount Vernon from all parts of his own country and of the world, whether they came from respect or curiosity, brought a good deal of weariness to a man tired with the cares of state and longing for absolute repose.  Yet he would not close his doors to any one, for the Virginian sense of hospitality, always peculiarly strong in him, forbade such action.  To relieve himself, therefore, in this respect, he sent for his nephew Lawrence Lewis, who took the social burden from his shoulders.  But although the visitors tired him when he felt responsible for their pleasure, he did not shut himself up now any more than at any other time in self-contemplation.  He was constantly thinking of others; and the education of his nephews, the care of young Lafayette until he should return to France, as well as the happy love-match of Nellie Custis and his nephew, supplied the human interest without which he was never happy.