was seen to file off to the parlor, where "Lady Washington" waited to receive them. Merrily did they chat with the good lady over the trials and "times of the Revolution." The old soldiers always found a cordial welcome at her door. The President might be much engaged, but she would surely allow the scarred veterans of her husband's world-renowned army to inquire after her health, and greet her with a "God bless you." Each had some glorious feat to relate one had been a soldier of the life guard, another had seen the surrender of Lord Cornwallis. All received a pleasing word, and were "kindly bid to stay," and led to the steward's table for refreshments. The proudest day of many a brave soldier, was that, on which "Lady Washington" deigned to speak words of kindness and approval to him.

For the gaieties and public notice, which her position imposed upon her, she had little taste. "When I was much younger, I should probably have enjoyed the innocent gaieties of life as much as most persons of my age; but I had long since placed all the prospects of my future happiness in the still enjoyments of the fireside at Mount Vernon. I sometimes think the arrangement is not quite as it ought to have been,-that I, who had much rather be at home, should occupy a place with which a great many younger and gayer women would be extremely pleased. I have learned too much of the vanity of human affairs to expect felicity from the scenes of public life. I am still determined to be cheerful and happy in whatever situation I may be; for I have learned from experience, that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions, and not on our circumstances."

Amid the dazzling glory of her husband's renown, she was free from affectation or pretension. True, she rode in a family carriage drawn by four or six gay horses, "with servants and outriders in rich livery," but this was a style common among Virginia planters. When Washington entered upon his duties as President, his wife and her grand-children were brought to New York. Everywhere on her journey she was greeted with marks of affection and respect. "As she approached Philadelphia, the President of Pennsylvania, and other of the State functionaries, with a number of the principal inhabitants of both sexes, came forth to meet her, and she was attended into the city by a numerous cavalcade, and welcomed with the ringing of bells and firing of cannon."

Mrs. Washington was very domestic and industrious for a lady of her position. Her style of dress was plain, and she was given to the unfashionable habit of knitting. During the Revolution she used to ply her needles in knitting stockings for the poor soldiers. Her example had its salutary effect on her lady visitors. These habits greatly annoyed some of the gay New York ladies, when

Martha Washington came to the Seat of Government as the President's wife. A number of them courageously undertook to reform the good lady, and train her to more fashionable ways. How this was done we will allow the pen of another to describe:

"One morning, three fair dames appeared at the Government House. They were dressed out in the utmost gaiety and splendor, as if nature had formed them merely to carry finery and trinkets. Diamonds sparkled in their ears and glittered on their necks. Their hair was puffed out, frizzled, crimped, and tortured in every form but that of nature's elegance. They wore, also, high head-dresses, adorned with artificial flowers and nodding plumes, and fluttering ribbons to crown the edifice of hair which fashion then decreed should encumber their heads and brains. Their hands were emblazoned with rings, their wrists encumbered with ruffles, clasps, and bracelets. Stiff muslin rose like foam around their chests and shoulders; and though their rich brocaded silks fell in costly folds about them, and partially hid the pressure that gripped in their waists, yet the pent-up heart had to sympathize with the oppressed brain, overweighted with fashion's load. They came rustling and fluttering into the presence of the lady they sought. She received them in a plainly-furnished room, in which she spent her morning. With dignified courtesy the thoughtful matron rose to greet her visitors. Her well-filled book-case made for use, not show, was behind her chair; her table, with her work-basket and materials for work, before her; and in her hand were her knitting-needles, the useful companion of many lonely hours. Gravely, yet most courteously, she heard the remarks which, with faltering speech, they had come to make. For they did not find it so easy to speak of luxury and display as desirable, when they were face to face with the noble woman who, through years of anxiety and privation, had ministered to the wants and mitigated the sufferings of the soldiers, during the terrible struggle for independence. Somehow their faces soon lost the defiant air and vain simper they had worn when they first entered her presence, and had deepened into seriousness and respectful attention, as the wife of Washington, after hearing them, said:

'Ladies, you came to advise me, and, as far as kindness prompted you, I am obliged for the motive, though I cannot act on your suggestions. You are all in the bloom of life. Many years, I trust, are before you. My age, even more, far more, than my station, sanctions my giving you some advice. Dear ladies, suffer the word of exhortation. Should Christian women, honored wives and mothers, be content to aim at no higher glory than that of the insect that glitters in the sunbeam,-to be as the fire-fly or the humming-bird? You spoke of the greatness of my husband. His

dear mother ever looked well to the ways of her household. She taught him to be industrious by her example, for her spinningwheel spun the clothes he wore from his earliest days, and she, like myself, loved the knitting-needles.' (She looked, as she spoke, at her knitting.)

'Ladies, during eight years of ceaseless struggle, the women of America, the mothers of the land,-spent no money on finery for themselves. They spent all their available means in providing clothing for the army, which, but for that succor, must have perished in our long and bitter winters. I do not wish to boast; I did only my duty; nay, I know it was my privilege, as Washington's wife, to toil for the men under his command. I always went into Winter quarters with him. In summer time, I, and his mother, and my friends, were at our spinning-wheels. Once, in the Winter, I had sixteen looms under one roof, all weaving cloth,-coarse, indeed, but warm,-for the soldiers of the nation. Trust me, woman was made for nobler ends than merely to display finery, which mars rather than improves the grace that nature has bestowed.'

I know,' said one of the ladies, thoughtfully, 'that Mrs. Sarah Bache, the daughter of Dr. Benjamin Franklin, sold her ornaments and all she could possibly spare, to commence a fund, which other ladies in Philadelphia were induced to aid, both by hand and purse. They made, I remember, 2,200 shirts in one season for the army.'

'Yes, dear young ladies, the example of Franklin's daughter influenced the less thoughtful, but not less kind-hearted ladies of that city. One faithful woman,-how much she can do to check the influences of luxury and folly! Our country-women, before the troubles, had grown fond of foreign fashions, and it was feared that as we depended for luxuries on Europe, the patriotic desire for independence might be checked by a cause so trivial and yet so dangerous as the frippery of female fashions. Mrs. Warren, I remember, did good service to the cause of liberty and truth, when, in a poem she wrote, she satirized her country-women's love of dress.'

"The poem,' said another lady, 'was once suggested by the remark of a friend of her's: "That all articles of foreign commerce should be dispensed with, except absolute necessaries.' I remember Mrs. Warren amusingly put down a fancied list of articles an American lady could not dispense with. I forgot the words, but

'I can find them,' said the lady-President, reaching her hand to a book on the shelves behind her, and after a little search, coming to the words:

An inventory clear

Of all she needs, Lamira offers here:

Some lawns and lute-strings, blonde and Mechlin laces
Fringes and jewels, fans and tweezer-cases;
Gay cloaks and hats of every shape and size;
Scarfs, cardinals, and ribbons of all dyes,
With ruffles stamped and aprons of tambour;
Tippets and handkerchiefs, at least three-score;
And feathers, furs, rich satins, and ducapes,
And head-dresses in pyramidal shapes.
So weak Lamira, and her wants so few,
Who can refuse? They're but her sex's due.
In youth, indeed, an antiquated page

Taught us the threatenings of a Hebrew sage
'Gainst wimples, mantles, curls, and crisping-pins;
But rank not these among our modern sins.

Our minds and manners are well understood

To settle in a stomacher and hood.

The poor ladies, as the inventory was read over, looked down at their dresses in dismay. Almost every article enumerated they were wearing. Impressed, not offended, they left the presence of the noble matron, bearing her words in their minds, and, it is to be hoped, 'their influence in their hearts: for she gave not merely the precept of the lip, but the example of her life."

Mrs. Washington had learned to taste the bitter cup of sorrow. Her children died-the last in the bloom of man-and womanhood. Second only to her grief was that of her devoted husband, amid these bereavements. At length came her great sorrow. He whom the Indians thought to be possessed of a charm against death, must die at last. An eye-witness at his death-bed, says: "While we were fixed in silent grief, Mrs. Washington, who was seated at the foot of the bed, asked with a firm and collected voice, 'Is he gone?' I could not speak, but held up my hand as a signal that he was no more. "Tis well,' said she in the same voice. 'All is now over; I shall soon follow him; I have no more trials to pass through.'

Two years later she was seized with an attack of bilious fever. She knew that her end was at hand. Calling her grandchildren to her bedside, she gave them her parting counsel; spoke of the duties of life, the blessings of the Christian religion, of the comfort it gave her in seasons of affliction and trial, and of its hopes of a blessed immortality. Surrounded by her weeping friends, relatives and servants, the widowed wife of Washington passed gently into the world of everlasting love and peace, in the seventy-first year of her age.

THE FORCE OF EXAMPLE.

Men generally set sentinels to guard every avenue to the mind when engaged in argument. A shining life will go where a brilliant argument could not enter. Argument has its place, however.

MY MOTHER'S ALBUM.

BY PERKIOMEN.

Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe will hardly ever surpass in pathos what she has written in her sketch of FREDERICK DOUGLASS. We think it an apt introduction to our contribution, and cull it from the "Men of Our Times :".

"The first thing that every man remembers is his mother. Americans all have a mother at least that can be named. But it is exceedingly affecting to read the history of a human being who writes that, during all his childhood, he never saw his mother more than two or three times, and then only in the night. And why? Because she was employed on a plantation twelve miles away. Her only means of seeing her boy were to walk twelve miles over to the place where he was, spend a brief hour, and walk twelve miles back, so as to be ready to go to work at four o'clock in the morning. How many mothers would often visit their children by such an effort? and yet at well remembered intervals the mother of Frederick Douglass did this for the sake of holding her child a little while in her arms, lying a brief hour with him."

These words enter like a hot iron into the souls of all, half or whole orphaned children, of whom the world holds many. We never saw our mother, to know her, and consequently cannot remember her at all. We do seem to see a yawning tomb still, many people standing about and looking solemn, and a reverential man reading slowly out of a book-which we continue to associate with our mother's funeral. But this does not revive her for us; it buries her out of sight, rather. And yet this sad reminiscence is all that is left us of her.

But we had a mother, as well as all other mortals, and believe we have her still-all the more surely, because she is invisible and eternal. Though we cannot feast our eyes upon her, like the thoughtful boy with his kite, "we feel the drawing." Besides, we have a father, who stood over us and by us, thus far in life, who forgets not even yet to tell us of one long since departed, who had been and continues to be our mother. Her picture on the wall too, looks down upon us real livingly and lovingly, whenever we enter the drawing-room, and oftentimes causes us, by some mysterious influence emanating from it, to halt and listen toward it, as though it had called us from the living canvas. That picture is near and