Page:The youth of Washington (1910).djvu/228

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their wits amazing merry over the appointment of Edward Braddock to command the force sent out to protect you from the Indians. Ch. S——y was here for dinner yesterday. He said General B. was a stranger both to fear and common sense, and that his best fitness to fight Indians was that he was providentially bald. Lord C. S. says he saw Anne Bellamy, the actress, whom the General visited when on the point of leaving London. She said Mr. Braddock was melancholy, and declared he was sent with a handful of men to conquer nations and to cut his way through an unknown wilderness.

He said: "We are sent like sacrifices to the altar." That ancient ram! say I. He told her she would never see him again.

I wish you luck of your new General. He is touchy, punctilious, of a stiff mind, and has had forty years in the Guards. I do not think he was eager to leave Anne Bellamy and the clubs, for the man is a favourite; but he has little money, and it will be at least agreeable to spend the king's guineas.

If you were a woman I should tell you the new fashions. The beaux now carry their watches in their muffs, and the women are taking, more and more, to what Charles S——y calls undress uniform, so that soon Madame Eve will be the fashionable maker of gowns!—but I must not nourish your provincial blushes. Lord R. tells me that your General is a sad brute, for when