Page:Republican Court by Rufus Griswold.djvu/364

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THE REPUBLICAN COURT.

own caprices. The young girl was compelled to practise at the harpsichord four or five hours every day, and one morning, when she should have been playing, her grandmother entered the room, remarking that she had not heard her music, and also that she had observed some person going out, whose name she would much like to know. Nelly was silent, and suddenly her attention was arrested by a blemish on the wall, which had been newly painted a delicate cream color. "Ah, it was no federalist!" she exclaimed, looking at the spot, just above a settee; "none but a filthy democrat would mark a place with his good-for-nothing head in that manner!"

The public business so entirely occupied his time that Washington had few opportunities of visiting Mount Vernon. In 1793 however he was there nearly three months, during the terrible period of the prevalence of the yellow fever in Philadelphia.^[1] The disease broke out some time in August, but he continued at his post until the tenth of September. He wished to stay longer, but Mrs. Washington was unwilling to leave him exposed in such danger, and he could not think of hazarding her life and the lives of the children by remaining — "the house in which we lived," he says, "being in a manner blockaded by the disorder, which was every day becoming more and more fatal." Two days after Washington left Mr. Wolcott wrote to his father, "The apprehensions of the citizens cannot be increased; business is in a great measure abandoned; the true character of man is disclosed, and he shows

↑ A striking picture of the pestilence in Philadelphia, in 1793, is contained in Brockden Brown's novel of Arthur Mervyn. In the history of that period the names of Stephen Girard, already a prosperous merchant, and Matthew Carey and Thomas Clarkson, are honorably conspicuous. Freneau complains that the physicians of the city fled from the danger —

"On prancing steed, with sponge at nose,
From town behold Sangrado fly;
Camphor and tar, where'er he goes,
The infected shafts of death defy —
Safe, in an atmosphere of scents.
He leaves us to our own defence."

[1] A striking picture of the pestilence in Philadelphia, in 1793, is contained in Brockden Brown's novel of Arthur Mervyn. In the history of that period the names of Stephen Girard, already a prosperous merchant, and Matthew Carey and Thomas Clarkson, are honorably conspicuous. Freneau complains that the physicians of the city fled from the danger —

"On prancing steed, with sponge at nose,
From town behold Sangrado fly;
Camphor and tar, where'er he goes,
The infected shafts of death defy —
Safe, in an atmosphere of scents.
He leaves us to our own defence."

[1]