It was strong and of good workmanship and its maker heard with pride that it had made the long southern tour of 1791 without starting a nail or a screw.

This coach was purchased at the sale of the General's effects by George Washington Parke Custis and later in a curious manner fell into the possession of Bishop Meade, who ultimately made it up into walking sticks, picture frames, snuff boxes and such mementoes.
At Mount Vernon to-day the visitor is shown a coach which the official Handbook states is vouched for as the original "White Chariot." In reality it seems to be the coach once owned by the Powell family of Philadelphia.

It is said to have been built by the same maker and on the same lines, and Washington may have ridden in it, but it never belonged to him.
Most people think of Washington as a marble statue on a pedestal rather than as a being of flesh and blood with human feelings, faults and virtues.

He was self-contained, he was not voluble, he had a sense of personal dignity, but underneath he was not cold.

He was really hot-tempered and on a few well-authenticated occasions fell into passions in which he used language that would have blistered the steel sides of a dreadnaught.