man in his infancy, and not a single chair in which he sat is now heard of. "Have you a chair in which the General at any time sat?" was gently queried of one of the burghers. "No," was the reply; "but we have a chair in which he would have sat had he visited at our house." According to a turf authority of high rank, the lineage of many of the horses around Fredericksburg is traced up to Washington's fine stock bred at Mount Vernon. The General truly was a great lover of horses, and raced as well as bred them.

"Kenmore" is the name of the old mansion in which Washington's sister Betty dwelt, not far from his mother's house. Betty was very anxious to be the mistress of a fine house, and so, to satisfy her, her husband had Kenmore constructed. Their son was for a long time mayor of the town. The mansion is large and well preserved outside, though the interior decorations decayed at an early date. The original frescoing of walls and ceilings, which so pleased Madam Betty's æsthetic taste, was the work of an English

soldier captured during the Revolution, and sent for safe-keeping to Fredericksburg. The tradition in the family was that immediately after finishing his work he accidentally fell from the scaffold and was killed. The old building has recently been purchased by a gentleman from Baltimore, and he has undertaken to restore its former splendor.

"Lodge No. 4" of the Masonic fraternity of Fredericksburg is quite famous from having at various times embraced in its membership many eminent men. It was the fourth lodge established in colonial Virginia, and was organized in 1735. Among its early members was Washington, who received the first degree November 4, 1752, the second degree March 3, 1753, and the third degree August 4, 1753. The Bible used in these ceremonies, still in good preservation, is the richest treasure of the lodge; it was printed at Cambridge, by John Field, in 1668. The Bible is always borne "in state" during the grand performances of the Masons. By order of the lodge, and subscriptions raised

by its exertions to the amount of $5000, a very beautiful and faithful statue of Washington in white marble was wrought by the sculptor Hiram Powers, and was safely transported from Florence; ere it could be erected the war came on, when it was sent to Richmond for safe-keeping, but was destroyed there in a conflagration.

The first church in the town was erected in 1732, and Rev. Patrick Henry, uncle of the great orator, was the first preacher to fill its pulpit, from which the doctrines of the Church of England only were allowed to issue. The church was the only one, indeed, in the whole of "St. George's parish," which at that time included half a dozen of the present counties. The great orator, when a boy, was a frequent hearer of his uncle's eloquent sermons, and it is said that they first inspired him with the fancy of becoming a public speaker. The parish still exists, but of the original rough church not a trace remains. Of the dozen churches at present existing in the town two belong to the Episcopalian creed-one being "High" and the other "Low" Church. In the olden times many of the Fredericksburg divines were noted for quaint ways and sayings, in and out of the pulpit. Soon after the inauguration of General Andrew Jackson as President, an old Methodist parson named Kobler, a stanch Whig, while offering up prayers in his church, took occasion to exhibit his uncompromising notion of honest, plain dealing. After praying for After praying for the new President's health, happiness, and the success of his administration, he added, solemnly, the words, though Thou, O Lord, knowest that we did not want him!" Another of these outspoken clergymen, a man of great stature, strength, and of highly strung passions, was accustomed to rule his vestry with a rod of iron. Wishing to have something done which only the vestry could do, he found that a majority of them were unwilling to vote as he wished. A quarrel ensued; high words were speedily followed by blows, and in this pugilistic encounter the clergyman, thanks to his gigantic strength and skill as a bruiser, got the better of the recusant vestrymen, mauled them unmercifully, and drove them from his presence. The affair having naturally created great excitement, he rose to explain on the following Sunday, and, desiring to justify his conduct by Holy Writ, preached a virulent sermon from the text: And I con

tended with them, and cursed them, and smote certain of them, and plucked off their hair.”

The fame of General Hugh Mercer, the hero of the battle at Princeton, of whom Washington spoke in such high praise, is one of the rich heirlooms of Fredericksburg. The house of his son, Colonel Mercer," is pointed out as one of the sights. The colonel was educated at government expense, on account of his father's gallant service, and on leaving West Point rose to be a colonel in the army. After his retirement he was during thirty years president of a bank, though its operation, it is said, was a sealed book to him, owing to the unfinancial turn given his mind by a long military career. He was a mere figure-head president, according to our modern parlance. His lack of "practicability" was as notorious as that of Chief Justice Marshall, who, riding in his gig one day near Fredericksburg, called to a darky to cut down a sapling which had arrested the wheel of the vehicle, and was greatly surprised when the darky, by simply backing the gig a couple of feet, enabled him to proceed on his way.

During the first half of this century several wild schemes for making rapid fortunes, after the "South-sea Bubble" style, were set afloat in Fredericksburg, quite turning the heads of all save the steadiest old citizens. Upon the discovery of gold in Spottsylvania County a craze arose for mining proportionately equal to the California fever of '48-'49. Greedy, inexperienced speculators sold all their possessions to secure mining capital. On being informed of their proceedings a noted old Scotch merchant, who had amassed a million penny by penny, replied: "For every sax shillings they get out of it they'll put in saven and saxpence!" And his judgment proved to be correct: the mines ruined all who invested in them, and for a long time were neglected, though of late years they have been properly worked, and have yielded moderate gains. Another craze sprang up afterward for the production of silk. This "multicaulis" or mulberry mania still furnishes a world of humor to the "elders," while narrating their vivid reminiscences of its various phases. Cocooneries were started at every supposed available point, and a rage prevailed to plant mulberry slips in garden and farm. As

high a price as twenty-five cents was paid for a single bud. After a while the bubble burst, and the speculators were again caught without any margin. A lady investor, who had rented the garden of the old Scotch merchant mentioned, was short on the rent, and threw herself on his mercy. "Yes," solemnly said the old man, "I'll release you from the rent, but on one condition only, and that is that you grub up every multicaulis plant on my ground before night!"

The sites of an iron furnace and of a gun factory that supplied arms during the Revolution are points of attraction in the neighborhood of Fredericksburg. They were of such importance that General Washington detailed soldiers to guard them from British raiding parties. No thing save a few crumbled walls over. run with briers and honeysuckles, a few foundation stones, is left to show where these establishments existed. Prior to the Revolution the iron-works of the vicinity were the most extensive in the colony of Virginia. They were inaugurated by the colonial Governor Spotswood, who found his profit in supplying the King's American subjects with home-made agricultural implements, and ovens, skillets, pans, and

pots for the kitchen, at reduced rates. While attending to his iron interests Spotswood erected a magnificent mansion in the county of Spottsylvania (named in his honor). Still inhabited by one of his descendants, it is in excellent preservation, though over a hundred years old, and compares favorably with the modern residences around it.

On Marye's Heights, within a stone'sthrow of the Washington and Richmond Railway, there is now a national cemetery. It was laid out in 1865, and completed in 1868, and in it are buried the remains of the soldiers and officers killed in the battles of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Wilderness, Spottsylvania Court House, and North Anna; that is to say, all the bodies the military authorities could recover. The total number of interments is 15,257: known, 2487; unknown, 12,770.

The sides of the hill have been sloped in terraces, which are planted with small trees.

A handsome brick wall incloses the cemetery, through which run tracks for vehicles and walks for pedestrians, and an avenue crossing the plain to the town is soon to be built. In the beginning there was established in the inclosure a conservatory in which flowers were

grown for decking the graves on the anniversary of each of the battles, but it was afterward abolished as involving an unnecessary expense. Immediately in the centre, on the summit of the hill, four large old-fashioned smooth-bore cannons, surrounded by several small pyramids of balls, are erected, with their butt ends resting on granite foundations, a ball in each muzzle. One of these guns bears a brass shield, with the appropriate dedication. In the midst rises the lofty flagstaff, upon which a small flag is always kept hoisted, except on national festivals, when a large banner is floated in the

Of the houses that stood between the town and Marye's Heights on the day of the battle only three remain, but the intervening plain is now much more thickly built over than it was then. Of the shot and shell, grape and musket-balls, which were strewn on the field, there have been gathered many wagon-loads, and the small boy still to-day finds a ready source of pocket-money in the lead to be picked up on the broad expanse, now green with varying crops and meadows smiling in daisies. Indeed, excepting the cemetery itself, it is hard to find a trace of the battle's havoc, such is the reme

breeze. In a neat cottage at the entrance, contiguous to a part of the stone wall that served as a breastwork at the foot of the hill during the battle, dwells with his family the guardian, who keeps the ledger of this little city of the dead, and gives to the passing stranger all requisite information concerning them. In the number of its interments this cemetery rates third, those of Vicksburg and Nashville leading it. Only seventy-six of the national cemeteries are in charge of regularly appointed keepers, and the total number of dead buried in all is 308,331.

dial power of time; earth works were long since levelled, and new houses in the town itself replace those that were burned or battered during the bombardment. A single cannon-ball is allowed to remain imbedded in the rear wall of a drug shop on the main street as a curiosity, or rather a freak in the dynamics of war. On the neighboring field of Chancellorsville only one house now stands, and no one would ever imagine from the unscarred locality that the deadly encounter of two great armies took place there twenty years ago.

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CHAPTER IV. ATER in the evening Mrs. Rutherford was sitting with her nephew on the piazza of her new residence, the little house he had engaged for her use during her stay in Gracias; they were looking at the moonlight on the lagoon. The lit tle house had piazzas for all lights, for the morning sunshine and the western sunset, as well as for the moonlight on the lagoon. They were not the usual piazza; they were included within the house walls, and under its roof, like the Italian loggia.

The little residence had but one story, and that story was a second one. It had been built above an old passageway of stone, which had led from the Franciscan monastery down to the monks' landingplace on the shore. This passageway made a turn at a right angle not far from the water, and this angle had been taken possession of by the later architect, who had rested his square superstructure solidly on the old walls at the south and west, and had then built a light open arch below to support the two remaining sides, thus securing an elevated position, fine air, and a beautiful view of the sea beyond Patricio at comparatively small expense for his high foundation. An outside stairway of stone, which made a picturesque turn on the way, led up to the door of this abode, and, taken altogether, it was an odd and pleasant little eyrie on a pleasant shore.

Evert Winthrop, however, when he secured it for his aunt, had not been thinking so much of its pleasantness or its oddity as its freedom from damp, Mrs. Rutherford having long been of the opinion that most of the evils of life, mental, moral, and physical, the lack of beauty, and the origin of crime, could be directly attributed to the condition of cellars. "You will observe, Aunt Katrina, that there is no cellar," he remarked, as she took possession. "You can live up here on this high platform like fish spread out to dry. suppose there is nothing in the world quite so dry as a well-dried cod."

I

The eyrie had but one fault, and that was a fault only if people were disposed to be sentimental: the old walls beneath, built by the monks long before, had the air of performing their present duty with extreme unwillingness. Coming up from

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the water, they passed under the modern house reluctantly; they supported its southern front under protest, and were felt to turn and go onward on the west side with a disapproval that came through the floor. Mrs. Rutherford declared that it made her feel uncanny. But the sentiments of Minerva Poindexter, avowed in reply to her mistress's declaration, were of an entirely different nature.

"I admire to hev 'em there," said this rigid Protestant; "I admire to know they're under my feet, and tromple 'em down!" For though she had been over the entire civilized world, though she could adapt Paris fashions, and was called Celestine, Miss Poindexter had never in her heart abated one inch of her original Puritan principles, and as she now came and went over the old monks' passage her very soles rejoiced in the opportunity to express their detestation of the entire monastic system; she ground them deeply into the straw mattings on purpose.

The little plaza of Gracias-á-Dios was near the eyrie. On one side of it stood the rambling old inn, the Seminole House, encircled by a line of stout posts for the use of its patrons, who for the most part came mounted, for in that country there was very little driving; all rode. There were horses of many grades, mules, and the little ponies not much larger than sheep that browsed in the marshes. To walk was beneath the dignity of any one; the poorest negro had his sorry animal of some sort to save him from that. As to walking for pleasure, that crazed idea had not yet reached Gracias.

The Seminole had agreed to send lunches and dinners of its best cooking to the house on the shore, and its best cooking, though confined to the local ingredients, was something not to be despised. It owed its being to the perfect culinary intuitions of Aunt Dinah-Jim, a native artist, who evolved in some mysterious way from her disorderly kitchen the dishes for which she was celebrated at uncertain hours. But if the hours were uncertain, the dishes

were not.

The old black woman sent the results of her labors to the eyrie in the charge of Telano Johnson, a tall, slender colored boy of eighteen summers, whose spotless white linen jacket and intense gravity of demeanor gained him the favor of even