The Essential Writings of President Woodrow Wilson. Woodrow Wilson

companies unlettered, rude, and shallow;

      His hours fill'd up with riots, banquets, sports;

      And never noted in him any study,

      Any retirement, any sequestration

      From open haunts and popularity."

      

ALEXANDER SPOTSWOOD

      Bat to many a scapegrace had come "reformation in a flood, with such a heady current, scouring faults," as to make a notable man of him. There were at least the traditions of culture in the colony, and enough men of education and refinement to leaven the mass. Life ran generously, even if roughly, upon the scattered plantations, and strong, thinking, high - bred men had somehow a mastery and leadership in it all which made them feel Virginia their home and field of honor.

      Change of time and of affairs, the stir of growing life in Virginia as she ceased from being a mere colony and became a sturdy commonwealth, boasting her own breed of gentlemen, merchants, scholars, and statesmen, laid upon the Washingtons, as upon other men, a touch of transformation. Seventy-six years had gone by since John Washington came out of Bedfordshire and took up lands on Bridges' Creek in Westmoreland in Virginia, and still his children were to be found in the old seats he had chosen at the first. They had become thorough Virginians with the rest, woven into the close fibre of the new life. Westmoreland and all the counties that lay about it on the Northern Neck were strictly of a piece with the rest of Virginia, for all they had waited long to be settled. There the Washingtons had become country gentlemen of comfortable estate upon the accepted model. John had begotten Lawrence, and Lawrence had begotten Augustine. John had thriftily taken care to see his offspring put in a way to prosper at the very first. He had acquired a substantial property of his own where the land lay very fertile upon the banks of the Potomac, and he had, besides, by three marriages, made good a very close connection with several families that had thriven thereabouts before him. He had become a notable figure, indeed, among his neighbors ere he had been many years in the colony—a colonel in their militia, and their representative in the House of Burgesses; and they had not waited for his death to call the parish in which he lived Washington Parish. His sons and grandsons, though they slackened a little the pace he had set them in his energy at the outset, throve none the less substantially upon the estates he had left them, abated nothing of the dignity and worth they had inherited, lived simply, and kept their place of respect in the parish and state. Wars came and went without disturbing incident for them, as the French moved upon the borders by impulse of politics from over sea; and then long peace set in, equally without incident, to stay a whole generation, while good farming went quietly forward, and politicians at home and in the colonies planned another move in their game. It was in the mid-season of this time of poise, preparation, and expectancy that George Washington was born, on the 22d of February, in the year 1732, " about ten in the morning," William Gooch, gentlest of Marlborough's captains, being Governor in Virginia. He came into the world at the plain but spacious homestead on Bridges' Creek, fourth son, fifth child, of Augustine Washington, and of the third generation from John Washington, son of the one-time rector of Purleigh. The homestead stood upon a green and gentle slope that fell away, at but a little distance, to the waters of the Potomac, and from it could be seen the broad reaches of the stream stretching wide to the Maryland shore beyond, and flooding with slow, full tide to the great bay below. The spot gave token of the quiet youth of the boy, of the years of grateful peace in which he was to learn the first lessons of life, ere war and the changing fortunes of bis country hurried him to the field and to the council.