Washington seldom missed going to the horse-races, one of the chief functions of the year, not only for jockeys and sporting men, but for the fashionable world of the aristocracy.

Thanks to his carefulness and honesty in keeping his accounts, we have his own record of the amounts he spent at cards--never large amounts, nor indicative of the gamester's passion.
Thus Washington passed the first ten years of his married life.

A stranger meeting him at that time might have little suspected that here was the future founder of a nation, one who would prove himself the greatest of Americans, if not the greatest of men.

But if you had spent a day with Washington, and watched him at work, or listened to his few but decisive words, or seen his benign but forcible smile, you would have said to yourself--"This man is equal to any fate that destiny may allot to him.".