[Footnote 1:  The Marquis de Chastelleux speaks of the perfect training of Washington’s saddle horses, and says the general broke them himself.  He adds “He (the general) is an excellent and bold horseman, leaping the highest fences and going extremely quick, without standing upon his stirrups, bearing on the bridle or letting his horse run wild; circumstances which our young men look upon as so essential a part of English horsemanship, that they would rather break a leg or an arm than renounce them.”]

He had, indeed, in all ways a thoroughly well-balanced mind and temper.  In great affairs he knew how to spare himself the details to which others could attend as well as he, and yet he was in no wise a despiser of small things.  Before the Revolution, there was a warm discussion in the Truro parish as to the proper site for the Pohick Church.  Washington and George Mason led respectively the opposing forces, and each confidently asserted that the site he preferred was the most convenient for the largest number of parishioners.  Finally, after much debate and no conclusion, Washington appeared at a vestry meeting with a collection of statistics.  He had measured the distance from each proposed site to the house of each parishioner, and found, as he declared, that his site was nearer to more people than the other.  It is needless to add that he carried his point, and that the spot he desired for the church was the one chosen.

The fact was that, if he confided a task of any sort to another, he let it go on without meddling; but if he undertook anything himself, he did it with the utmost thoroughness, and there is much success in this capacity to take pains even in small things.  He managed his plantations entirely himself when he was at home, and did it well.  He knew the qualities of each field, and the rotation of its crops.  No improvement in agriculture and no ingenious invention escaped his attention, although he was not to be carried away by mere novelty, which had such a fascination for his ex-secretary at Monticello.  Every resource of his estate was turned to good use, and his flour and tobacco commanded absolute confidence with his brand upon them.  He followed in the same painstaking way all his business affairs, and his accounts, all in his own hand, are wonderfully minute and accurate.  He was very exact in all business as well as very shrewd at a bargain, and the tradition is that his neighbors considered the general a formidable man in a horse-trade, that most difficult of transactions.  Parkinson mentions that everything purchased or brought to the house was weighed, measured, or counted, generally in the presence of the master himself.  Some of his letters to Lear, his private secretary, show that he looked after his china and servants, the packing and removal of his furniture with great minuteness.  To some persons this appears evidence of a petty mind in a great man, but to those who reflect a little more deeply it will occur that this accuracy and care