It Is Bad For A Country To Have
No Names Worthy Of Monumental Brass; But It Is Worse For A Country
To Have Monumental Brasses Covered With Names Which Have Never Been
Made Worthy Of Such Honor.
Ellsworth had shown himself to be brave
and foolish.
Let his folly be pardoned on the score of his courage,
and there, I think, should have been an end of it.
I found afterward that Mount Vernon was accessible, and I rode
thither with some officers of the staff of General Heintzelman,
whose outside pickets were stationed beyond the old place. I
certainly should not have been well pleased had I been forced to
leave the country without seeing the house in which Washington had
lived and died. Till lately this place was owned and inhabited by
one of the family, a Washington, descended from a brother of the
general's; but it has now become the property of the country, under
the auspices of Mr. Everett, by whose exertions was raised the money
with which it was purchased. It is a long house, of two stories,
built, I think, chiefly of wood, with a veranda, or rather long
portico, attached to the front, which looks upon the river. There
are two wings, or sets of outhouses, containing the kitchen and
servants' rooms, which were joined by open wooden verandas to the
main building; but one of these verandas has gone, under the
influence of years. By these a semicircular sweep is formed before
the front door, which opens away from the river, and toward the old
prim gardens, in which, we were told, General Washington used to
take much delight.
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