To tell you how glad I should be to see you at that place is unnecessary.

To this I will add that it would not only give me pleasure, but pleasure also to Mrs.
Washington, and others of the family with whom you are acquainted, and who all unite, in every good wish for you and yours.[1] [Footnote 1: Ford, XIII, 377.] In a few days he returned to Mount Vernon and there indulged himself in a leisurely survey of the plantation.

He rode from one farm to another and reacquainted himself with the localities where the various crops were either already springing or would soon be.

Indoors there was an immense volume of correspondence to be attended to with the aid of Tobias Lear, the faithful secretary who had lived with the President during the New York and Philadelphia periods.

When the letters were sorted, many answers had to be written, some of which Washington dictated and others he wrote with his own hand.