“If the ladies can put up with such entertainment, and submit to
    partake of it on plates once tin, but now iron, not become so by
    the labor of hard scouring, I shall be happy to see them.”

We may be sure that the ladies found their dinner a pleasant one, and that the writer of the note was neither a stiff nor unsocial host.  A much more charming letter is one to Nellie Custis, on the occasion of her first ball.  It is too long for quotation, but it is a model of affectionate wisdom tinged with a gentle humor, and designed to guide a young girl just beginning the world of society.

Here, however, is another extract from a letter to Madame de Lafayette, of rather more serious purport, but in the same strain, and full of a simple and, as we should call it, an old-fashioned grace.  He was replying to an invitation to visit France, which he felt obliged to decline.  After giving his reasons, he said:  “This, my dear Marchioness (indulge the freedom), is not the case with you.  You have youth (and, if you should incline to leave your children, you can leave them with all the advantages of education), and must have a curiosity to see the country, young, rude, and uncultivated as it is, for the liberties of which your husband has fought, bled, and acquired much glory, where everybody admires, everybody loves him.  Come, then, let me entreat you, and call my cottage your home; for your own doors do not open to you with more readiness than mine would.  You will see the plain manner in which we live, and meet with rustic civility; and you shall taste the simplicity of rural life.  It will diversify the scene, and may give you a higher relish for the gayeties of the court when you return to Versailles.”

There is also apparent in many of his letters a vein of worldly wisdom, shrewd but kindly, too gentle to be called cynical, and yet touched with the humor which reads and appreciates the foibles of humanity.  Of an officer who grumbled at disappointments during the war he wrote:  “General McIntosh is only experiencing upon a small scale what I have had an ample share of upon a large one; and must, as I have been obliged to do in a variety of instances, yield to necessity; that is, to use a vulgar phrase, ’shape his coat according to his cloth,’ or in other words, if he cannot do as he wishes, he must do what he can.”  The philosophy is homely and common enough, but the manner in which the reproof was administered shows kindly tact, one of the most difficult of arts.  Here is another passage, touching on something outside the range of war and politics.  He was writing to Lund Washington in regard to Mrs. Washington’s daughter-in-law, Mrs. Custis, who was contemplating a second marriage.  “For my own part,” he said, “I never did, nor do I believe I ever shall, give advice to a woman who is setting out on a matrimonial voyage:  first, because I never could advise one to marry without