THE STORY OF THE FATHER OF HIS COUNTRY. GEORGE WASHINGTON. BY MISS FRANCES M. PERRY. CHAPTER I. BOYHOOD DAYS. We like to call George Washington the father of our country. This title must not make us think of him as connected with the early settlement of America. Fifty years had passed since the settlement of Jamestown, and Virginia was already a flourishing colony when George Washington's great-grandfather crossed the sea to make his home on the western side of the Atlantic. He bought an extensive tract of fertile land, lying between the Potomac and the Rappahannock rivers. He cleared the forest, ploughed the ground, and cultivated acres of the broadleaved tobacco, to be shipped to the home country, where it was in great demand and brought a good price. On this estate, in a house built near Bridge's Creek, his children and his children's children were born and grew to manhood; and here, as every schoolboy knows, on February 22, 1732, George Washington was born. So, even though the country was still young and undeveloped, Washington enjoyed some of those advantages that we usually think of as belonging only to citizens of older countries. His people were known and respected far and near: and many important planters in that part of the colony were related to his family by ties of blood or marriage. Though the Washingtons had prospered, they lived very simply. The old-fashioned wooden farmhouse in which George Washington was born had four rooms on the ground-floor. The roof came down almost to the tops of the doors and windows, in front and rear. At the high-gabled ends of the building were great brick chimneys. The old house was unpretentious, even for that period, but it was dear |