The parlor, library
and breakfast room are on the south side of the hall; while to
the north are the reception room, parlor, and drawing room. All
of the rooms are what you would expect, "tasteful and charming,
yet simple."
An exquisitely wrought chimney-piece from the finest Sienite
marbles in Italy was presented to Washington for his Mount
Vernon home by Mr. Vaughan, of London. Upon three tablets of the
frieze are pleasing pastoral scenes, so fitting for this rural
home.
We were much impressed by a picture of Washington seen here. How
much more inspiring is a noble human countenance than the
grandest natural scenery.
Any one seeing a crowd of men in which Washington is one of the
number will at once ask, "Whose is the distinguished form
towering above the throng, a figure of superb strength and
perfect symmetry? He at once receives that hearty admiration
which youth and age alike bestow on a man who so forcibly
illustrates and embellishes manhood. No one finds cause of
regret for lavishing it, for that finely formed intellectual
head held a clear, vigorous brain; those fine blue eyes look
from the depths of a nature at once frank and noble; and in that
broad chest beat a heart filled with the love of freedom,
country and his fellow man."
The spirit of the boy pulsating with youth's warm blood who
carved his name on the west side of the Natural Bridge, where it
remained alone for nearly three-fourths of a century--that same
indomitable spirit rose high above the treacherous rocks of
fear, where it shone on the troubled sea of political injustice,
a beacon light to the venturesome mariners, until they were
landed safely upon the shore of Freedom.
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