For the sake of the friend that is gone.

From the East, where in light he reposes;

He is bringing a June with her roses.

The stars and the angels give warning—

O’er the flower-strewn stairs of the morning.

For the sorrow and passion are gone,

In the rush and the gladness of dawn.

[Pg 25]

The New in his brightness draws near;

And welcome this royal New Year.

[Pg 26]

[Pg 26]

The Courtship of George Washington

The quaint old steel engraving which shows George and Martha Washington sitting by a table, while the Custis children stand dutifully by, is a familiar picture in many households, yet few of us remember that the first Lady of the White House was not always first in the heart of her husband.

T

The years have brought us, as a people, a growing reverence for him who was in truth the “Father of His Country.” Time has invested him with godlike attributes, yet, none the less, he was a man among men, and the hot blood of youth ran tumultuously in his veins.

At the age of fifteen, like many another schoolboy, Washington fell in love. The man who was destined to be the Commander [Pg 27]of the Revolutionary Army, wandered through the shady groves of Mount Vernon composing verses which, from a critical standpoint, were very bad. Scraps of verse were later mingled with notes of surveys, and interspersed with the accounts which that methodical 

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