Page:The youth of Washington (1910).djvu/117

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me with desire to explore this rich wilderness. I learned that already the French had warned the fur-traders to leave and had driven away their hunters, and when I mentioned this to Lawrence he said we were not easy folk to drive, and, least of all, Pennsylvania Quakers, and that there would be trouble, which there was soon enough. We were on the edge of a struggle in which all the world was to share. Meanwhile, time went on, and what Lord Fairfax called the "frontier pot" was boiling.

I was often back at home, sometimes with my mother, or at Belvoir, or at Mount Vernon, riding to hounds, surveying, and making more than I needed in the way of money, and enough to keep me in horse-*flesh and to give me better clothes, for which I have always had a fancy. Only in the woods I liked best such dress as our rangers wear, and good moccasins are the best of foot-gear. But as to clothing, when not in the woods, I found in myself a liking for a plain genteel dress of the best, without lace or embroidery. Fine clothes do not make fine men, and the man must be foolish who has a better opinion of himself