utensils have been purchased and put in place, so that today, Mount Vernon is practically as it was in the last days of Washington. Even the grounds partake of their original arrangement. It is only the more leisurely of the tourists, how

PRIVATE ENTRANCE TO MOUNT VERNON. This road is not used by tourists.

ever, who see and realize everything that has been done. Take, for instance, the old box-wood garden. Some distance back of the mansion house are the box hedges, growing in conventional designs, and undoubtedly looking just as they did

a century and a quarter ago. This box is very old, as box-wood in America goes. Some of it was planted by Washington's older half-brother, Lawrence, before George Washington came to live at Mount Vernon. Some was planted by Mrs. Martha Custis - Washington, soon after she came to Mount Vernon as a bride, and some of it was planted by her in the course of her long residence there. Her grandmother, Nellie Custis, planted some of it and both ladies gave their attention to it, after the old-fashioned method in which the elite

have been unremitting in their care of this box garden in particular. In the main square of the hedge are a number of oldfashioned rose bushes which were planted by the hands of Nellie Custis. They are preserved with devoted care.

Many kindred of George Washington dwell on and about the original Wash

long, long ago, became Westmoreland county. He bought the farm from Col. Pope, a great landholder in the early colonial era, and whose daughter, Anne Pope, became the wife of the immigrant John Washington. These were the great grand parents of George Washington the Great, our first president.

John Washington through his marriage to Anne Pope obtained lands outside of the farm purchased by him. The original farm is owned by John E. Wilson, who married Miss Betty Washington, grand daughter of William Augustine Washington, a nephew of George Washington. Mr. and Mrs. Wilson are

to a farm house that snuggles in the shade of a graceful willow, old black locusts and honey locusts. There are a clump of fig bushes, a crape myrtle or two, chrysanthemums and dahlias. The man who lives here is Mr. George Washington, a kinsman of the Father of his Country. His wife was Miss Wirt, a descendant of William Wirt. The writer landed from the river steamer before dawn but loitering along the road, the east was alight when he came to this house. Thin blue smoke was curling from the kitchen chimney. A man came down the gravel walk from the farm house. hadn't been long awake and his toilet had been hastily made. His hands were in his trouser's pockets.

advanced in years. A score or more of Washingtons live on their ancestral lands and within rifle shot of the spot where George Washington was born.

Some of these people are prosperous farmers and professional men; others are not prosperous. They are all plain and simple folk who have the good will and respect of their neighbors. A peculiar thing about this family is that all its members have the distinctive Washington features.

The Potomac river landing nearest the birthplace and childhood home of George Washington is Wirt's wharf on Maddox Creek. Wirt's wharf takes its name from the family which owned the landing place and still owns many thousand acres thereabout-the Wirt family. William Wirt, born at Bladensburg, Md., in 1772, Attorney General of the United States in 1817, and anti-Masonic candidate for the Presidency in 1832, was a member of this influential family. The country adjacent to Wirt's wharf is called Wirtland and a number of the Wirts dwell on their ancestral lands. About a mile and a half from the wharf the traveler comes

He

"Are you Mr. George Washington?" asked the traveler.

"Yes, suh, that's my

"What relation are you to the great George Washington?" "Indeed, suh, I don't just know, but Mr. Wilson, who lives at Wakefield, has it all figured out and he will tell you if you want to know."

Here was a kinsman of the Father of his Country living in the original Washington neighborhood who had not paused long enough in life's struggle to acquaint himself with the degree of kinship. Yet there are persons who say Virginians talk pedigree in their sleep.

Mr. Washington said:

"The farm isn't looking very well just now. You can't get the hands to work. The wages are high, but the hands don't want to work."

There was something in this speech very suggestive of the complaints which Washington, the Father, often made in his letters to Tobias Lear. Then Mr. George Washington changed the subject. "Won't you come in and get warm and have some breakfast?" is what he said.

At table there was Mrs. George Washington, nee Miss Wirt, a comely matron who was much more insistent that the

stranger should take some more coffee, more corn muffins and more home-made sausage and more country butter than she was in giving out information about kinship to the great departed. Another at table was Miss Frances Washington, a great-great-grand niece of Father Washington. She is a stately young woman. Few persons near her home call her Frances. White and black alike know her as Miss Fanny. Her breakfast gown was a dainty garment of white-dotted black lawn with white shoulder straps crossed.

Others at table were Miss Elizabeth Wirt Washington, a quaint and reserved little lassie of ten years,' and Miss Frances Wirt Washington, nine years old, an active, bustling little lady who had set the table for breakfast and who sustained her part in the general conversation with decided animation. She took hold of the camera and plate case which the stranger carried and naively said, "Ain't this thing pretty heavy for you to tote?"

Then at table was the baby. He had been chris

tened a few days previously and the name given him was George Lee Swanson Washington. The Swanson was in honor of Governor Swanson of Virginia.

After leaving the home of the present George Washington the road twists through old fields, up-grown in young pine and through old pine woods. One passes several "cabins." A walk of a mile or so brings you to the home of Lawrence Washington, a descendant of Augustine Washington of Wakefield, eldest brother of George Washington. The by-path, along which the writer travelled, brought him up at the kitchen. door of this Washington home, where

daughter. Another daughter is a trained nurse in the George Washington hospital in Washington City. The young girl next to Julia Washington is Miss Bessie Hungerford, whose mother was Lena Washington, daughter of Robert J. Washington, of Campbellton.

A few hundred yards beyond the home of Lawrence Washington is Blenheim, an old brick house erected in the eighteenth century by William Augustine Washington. Mrs. Hungerford, nee Lena Washington, lives there with her family. So, almost in a group, and in simple quiet, live the descendants of the man Americans delight to most honor.

forward end from the shipyards in Northern Ireland to the docks at Southampton, England.

The Suevic was severed in the middle of No. 3 hold about forty feet forward of the watertight bulkhead, but the new structure is being carried up to include this bulkhead, so that it is to that extent longer than the portion that was abandoned on the rocks, and a corresponding length of material has been

dicated by her behaviour on the rocks when in spite of tempestuous seas, which caused her to bump heavily on the jagged abutments, she successfully resisted the forces of nature long enough to enable the greater portion of the ship to be salved.

In dry dock the vessel will be built up in such a way that the whole structure from the keel up, will occupy exactly the same positions as before.