Jacky's mind turned chiefly from study to dogs, horses and guns and, in an effort, to "make him fit for more useful purposes than horse races," Washington put him under the tutorship of an Anglican clergyman named Jonathan Boucher, who endeavored to instruct some of the other gilded Virginia youths of his day.

But Latin and Greek were far less interesting to the boy than the pretty eyes of Eleanor Calvert and the two entered into a clandestine engagement.

In all respects save one the match was eminently satisfactory, for the Calvert family, being descended from Lord Baltimore, was as good as any in America, and Miss Nelly's amiable qualities, wrote Washington, had endeared her to her prospective relations, but both were very young, Jack being about seventeen, and the girl still younger.

While consenting to the match, therefore, Washington insisted that its consummation should be postponed for two years and packed the boy off to King's College, now Columbia.

But Martha Washington was a fond and doting mother and, as Patty's death occurred almost immediately, Jack's absence in distant New York was more than she could bear.