[Illustration:  Washington resigning his commission at Annapolis]

Then again, apart from this mass of labor thrust upon him by outsiders, there were his own concerns.  His personal affairs required looking after, and he regulated accounts, an elaborate business always with him, put his farms in order, corresponded with his merchants in England, and introduced agricultural improvements, which always interested him deeply.  He had large investments in land, of which from boyhood he had been a bold and sagacious purchaser.  These investments had been neglected and needed his personal inspection; so in September, 1784, he mounted his horse, and with a companion and a servant rode away to the western country to look after his property.  He camped out, as in the early days, and heartily enjoyed it, although reports that the Indians were moving in a restless and menacing manner shortened his trip, and prevented his penetrating beyond his settled lands to the wild tracts which he owned to the westward.  Still he managed to ride some six hundred and eighty miles and get a good taste of that wild life which he never ceased to love, besides gathering a stock of information on many points of deeper and wider interest than his own property.

In the midst of all these employments, too, he attended closely to his domestic duties.  At frequent intervals he journeyed to Fredericksburg to visit his mother, who still lived, and to whom he was always a dutiful and affectionate son.  He watched over Mrs. Washington’s grandchildren, and two or three nephews of his own, whose education he had undertaken, with all the solicitude of a father, and at the expense again of much thought and many wise letters of instruction and advice.

Even from this brief list it is possible to gain some idea of the occupations which filled Washington’s time, and the only wonder is that he dealt with them so easily and effectively.  Yet the greatest and most important work, that which most deeply absorbed his mind, and which affected the whole country, still remains to be described.  With all his longing for repose and privacy, Washington could not separate himself from the great problems which he had solved, or from the solution of the still greater problems which he had done more than any man to bring into existence.  In reality, despite his reiterated wish for the quiet of home, he never ceased to labor at the new questions which confronted the country, and the old issues which were the legacy of the Revolution.

In the latter class was the peace establishment, on which he advised Congress, much in vain; for their idea of a peace establishment was to get rid of the army as rapidly as possible, and retain only a corporal’s guard in the service of the confederation.  Another question was that concerning the western posts.  As has been already pointed out, Washington’s keen eye had at once detected that this was the perilous