When on his way to Yorktown to capture Cornwallis he visited his home for the first time in six weary years, yet merely recorded: "I reached my own Seat at Mount Vernon (distant 120 Miles from the Hd.

of Elk) where I staid till the 12th." Not a word of the emotions which that visit must have roused! For almost six years after 1775 there is a gap in the diary, though for some months of 1780 he sets down the weather.

On May I, 1781, he begins a new record, which he calls a _Journal_, and he expresses regret that he has not had time to keep one all the time.

The subjects now considered are almost wholly military and the entries reveal a different man from that of 1775.

The grammar is better, the vocabulary larger, the tone more elevated, the man himself is bigger and broader with an infinitely wider viewpoint.
From November 5, 1781, for more than three years there is another blank, except for the journal of his trip to his western lands already referred to.