So both at Belvoir and at Mount Vernon, guests were frequent and broke the monotony and loneliness of their inmates.

I think the reputation of gravity, which was fixed upon Washington in his mature years, has been projected back over his youth.

The actual records are lacking, but such hints and surmises as we have do not warrant our thinking of him as a self-centred, unsociable youth.

On the contrary, he was rather, what would be called now, a sport, ready for hunting or riding, of splendid physical build, agile and strong.

He liked dancing, and was not too shy to enjoy the society of young women; indeed, he wrote poems to some of them, and seems to have been popular with them.